Health Canada on Thursday approved Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for children under five, making infants, toddlers and preschoolers eligible for vaccination for the first time.
Here is what you need to know:
When will it arrive and how will it be administered?
An Ontario government spokesperson told CP24 that the province expects to receive the Moderna vaccine for children under five “late” in the week of July 18-22, with administration to begin shortly after.
Moderna and the US Food and Drug Administration say the doses should be given a month apart, but NACI and Health Canada say they should be given eight weeks apart to maximize the generation of neutralizing antibodies over a longer period of time.
During Pfizer’s pediatric vaccine launch last winter, parents in Ontario could choose to have their child receive their second dose in less than eight weeks.
It is not known if that option will be available to this younger cohort.
The 10 microgram injection goes into the deltoid like most other vaccines.
It is smaller than Pfizer’s 25-microgram pediatric dose given to children ages 5 to 11 and Moderna’s 50-microgram dose approved for older children.
By comparison, adults receive a 100-microgram dose from Moderna or a 30-microgram dose from Pfizer.
because it is necessary
Pediatric infectious disease specialist Anna Banerji told CP24 that COVID-19, especially Omicron, can cause very serious outcomes in young children.
“You can have COVID pneumonia, COVID can exacerbate other underlying conditions like asthma, you can have serious issues like inflammatory syndrome,” he said.
In fact, Public Health Ontario’s tracking of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 reveals that, for the duration of the pandemic, children as young as four years old have been hospitalized in five to six times the rate of children from 5 to 11 years old and from 12 to 19 years old, with a particularly wide disparity after the arrival of the Omicron variant.
He said the estimated timeline suggests that no young children will be fully vaccinated by early September, but there is an opportunity to get the first doses for a large portion of them before then.
“It’s two doses of the vaccine eight weeks apart, so I’m not sure we can get kids vaccinated before school starts. But we can start as soon as it’s available.”
He said vaccinating day care and preschool, and even some kindergarten children, against COVID-19 will reduce the incidence of transmission and serious outcomes when the summer ends.
“It’s the last group of unvaccinated people to be together in these settings, so it’s a big deal.”
NACI found the Moderna pediatric vaccine to be 51% effective in preventing symptomatic infections from two weeks after dose two, in a trial conducted when Omicron was the dominant strain circulating in Canada.
There were no deaths or serious outcomes among the vaccinated group of trial participants due to COVID-19 or related conditions, such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).
It is safe?
Banerji said the Canadian trials found side effects typical of all vaccines, but nothing serious.
“In the study, they had placebo groups and vaccinated groups — they had 5,500 children in the study. There were no serious side effects with the vaccine, there was fussiness, crying, but there were no serious side effects associated with the vaccine.”
“Overall, there have been no side effects in the older child groups. There has been myocarditis in certain age groups, but overall the vaccine is safe.”
Will it reduce incidences of Long-COVID?
The vaccine is likely to reduce the incidence of persistent COVID-19 symptoms in young children, as it has in adults around the world.
A review this year by the UK Health Security Agency found that fully vaccinated people were about half as likely to see prolonged COVID symptoms compared to unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people.