Alberta Health ‘pleased’ with Health Canada approval of first dose of COVID-19 vaccine for children under five

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Alberta Health welcomes the approval of first-dose vaccines for children six months to five years of age as they begin to plan how the doses will be implemented.

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Health Canada on Thursday approved Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for infants and preschool children, making it the first approved vaccine for that age group in the country. The regulator says the Moderna vaccine can be given to young children between the ages of six months and five years in doses a quarter of the size approved for adults.

“After a thorough and independent scientific review of the evidence, the department has determined that the vaccine is safe and effective in preventing COVID-19 in children between six months and five years of age,” the department said in a statement.

Health Canada said it will continue to closely monitor the safety of the vaccine and has asked Moderna to provide updated data on its safety and efficacy. In its decision posted on the regulator’s website, the agency said results from the Phase 3 trial for the drug show that the immune response in children aged six months to five years was comparable to Moderna’s vaccine for children aged 18 to 25 years.

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Lisa Glover, a spokeswoman for Alberta Health, said they are pleased with the decision and are finalizing the details of what it will mean for Albertans.

“As always, our planning to roll out this vaccine to Albertans will depend on the supply from the federal government. We hope to receive an initial supply and be able to start rolling out this vaccine by the end of this month,” Glover said. “We will update Albertans on next steps as soon as possible.”

While serious illness among children is rare, cases in Alberta youth spiked earlier this year during a wave fueled by Omicron.

Supriya Sharma, a senior medical adviser at Health Canada, said Thursday that even children with mild illness can develop long-term symptoms and, in rare but severe cases, multi-system inflammatory syndrome, often requiring acute hospital care.

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The approval expands eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine to nearly two million children in Canada, although provinces will determine where and when children will be given the vaccine.

Glover said all doses for this age group in Alberta will be administered by Alberta Health Services, as the pharmacists’ scope of vaccine distribution is for people over the age of five.

Dr. Jia Hu, a public health physician in Calgary, said he was pleased to hear about the approval and hopes a similar Pfizer vaccine will be approved in the near future.

“It’s the last group in the population that hasn’t been eligible for a vaccine for all this time, so I think it’s very good,” Hu said.

The United States approved Moderna and Pfizer’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccines last month, and Hu said Canada has typically followed its southern neighbor closely.

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Hu said the question now is how quickly parents will roll up their children’s sleeves for vaccinations. Albertans had a fairly quick acceptance of the first two doses of vaccines when they were first released to the general public; however, they have not been as quick to vaccinate their children or give booster shots.

“Parents generally see this as something more serious in older adults. They are always a little bit more concerned about safety when it comes to anything they give their children,” Hu said. “Ultimately, I think where we sit now compared to where we sat six months ago when there was a lot of Omicron is very, very different in terms of people’s overall concerns (of COVID-19).”

Hu said that while most people have started to return to a normal way of life, he said the best case scenario would be to reopen while people stay up to date on their vaccinations and get any boosters they are eligible for.

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He said he is optimistic that the latest series of approved vaccines will be rolled out in time for the fall season, when respiratory illnesses typically spread at a faster rate.

In Alberta, 81.5% of the population, including those not eligible to receive a dose, have received two doses, while 38.4% of the total population have received a third dose.

In Moderna’s trials, two doses of the vaccine were given to children about four weeks apart, but NACI recommends waiting eight weeks between vaccinations.

NACI also recommends a third dose for immunocompromised children, if their parents choose to vaccinate them, with a four to eight week wait between injections.

For now, the committee says the COVID-19 vaccine should not be given to infants, toddlers or preschool children at the same time as vaccines for other diseases to help identify possible reactions.

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Health Canada said no safety issues were identified in the study. The most common reactions were similar to those experienced by children with other pediatric vaccines, including soreness at the site, drowsiness, and loss of appetite.

Less commonly, some children had a mild to moderate fever, swelling at the injection site, nausea, tender lymph nodes under the arm, headaches, and muscle aches.

Pfizer’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccine for young children between the ages of six months and five years was shipped to Health Canada last month and is still under review.

— With archives from The Canadian Press

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