Kaiser launches COVID-19 vaccine trial for children ages 5 to 11

This year has been a difficult year for 11-year-old Luci Guardino. Distance education was not easy and she could not bring her friends.

That’s why she’s participating in a COVID-19 vaccine trial in Sacramento, which began this week at a trio of Kaiser Permanente sites in Northern California, in children aged 5 to 11. She wants to allow others her age to redo what she loved before the pandemic.

“I really want to participate in the study to make sure we get back to normal life,” Kaiser’s pediatrician’s daughter Luci said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Luci is one of 75 children who will be enrolled in a survey that is also being conducted at the Kaiser site in Auckland and Santa Clara. This is part of a national effort involving approximately 4,600 children to evaluate the vaccine developed by study sponsor Pfizer-BioNTech.

A few weeks ago, Kaiser Medical Center in Los Angeles began a trial to evaluate the Modana vaccine in children aged 6 months to 11 years, according to a spokesperson for Kaiser. Until now, Participants up to 6 years old are registered.

At the northern California site, two-thirds of participants receive the vaccine and the remaining third receive the placebo. Designed as a double-blind study, neither the clinician nor the patient knows if the vaccine is in a syringe. Clinicians collect data on the efficacy and safety of doses, including side effects.

After taking the first injection, Luci said her arms were heavy, but she was not feeling sick or showing other harmful symptoms.

If all the trials are successful, the vaccine could be available to young children as early as the fall, according to Dr Nicola Klein, director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Research Center, which is leading the trial.

“So this could be the start of school,” Klein said, adding that timing is the best scenario and ultimately still “in the air”.

Pzizer has the COVID-19 vaccine Approved for children over 12 years old. In April, Stanford began testing the Pfizer vaccine 2 year old childModern Vaccination test for children March is 6 months to 11 years old.

The COVID-19 vaccine has generally been shown to be very safe among the more than 300 million Americans vaccinated, but according to Dr Pia Pannaraj, an expert in infectious diseases in hospitalized children. It is still important to test separately in the younger Los Angeles age group.

“Since children are not little adults, it is unlikely that a vaccine that works for adults will work for children,” said Panna Raj, associate professor of pediatrics at the hospital.

If the vaccine is approved for a younger age group, Pannaraj said the majority of children should receive it. She said allergies to vaccine components are one of the few indicators of an injection.

In general, children are less likely to get coronavirus infections than adults, especially the elderly. However, some people get sick enough to require hospitalization or intensive care. A minority develop serious complications Not found in adults called multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, Essentially their systemic inflammation.

Not only can this prevent serious complications, Pannaraj said, but children who are vaccinated can pass the virus on to parents, grandparents, teachers and others who can get worse. You can not.

It also helps bring kids like Luci back to normal.

“Children need to be able to go back to school and play sports. In the summer there are pool parties and sleepovers, ”she said. things. “