Children’s vaccine is safe and effective

This week marks the start of the vaccine roll-out to children aged 5 to 11. I’m really excited that our younger children will now get to participate in protecting themselves and their loved ones from Covid-19. As a parent, I know many people will want to understand more about Pfizer’s children’s vaccine so that they can make an informed decision about getting their kids aged 5 to 11 vaccinated.

For starters, it works in the same way as the vaccine for people 12 and over. The main difference is that each dose contains 10 micrograms of mRNA, compared with 30mcgs in the vaccine we’ve had. This lower dose is not because children are smaller but because our immune system changes as we get older. Children aged 5 to 11 will be given two doses about eight weeks apart, though this timing may change if Omicron gets into the community.

What about the safety of the vaccine? Here we can look to the United States, which administered a staggering 8.7 million doses to children aged 5 to 11 between November 3 and December 19. Just like

New Zealand, the US has a system for reporting any potential side effects. Their system is called VAERS – the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

The CDC has just published an analysis and it’s good news. First, from those 8.7 million doses there were just 4249 VAERS reports, of which almost all – 97.6 per cent – were classified as not serious. They were mostly for errors with how the vaccine was stored or prepared or for side effects such as headaches.

Just 100 of the VAERS reports were classified as serious. They mostly related to children experiencing fever and/or vomiting after being vaccinated. There were 12 reports of children having a seizure. There were no deaths related to the vaccine.

What about the risk of myocarditis – inflammation of the heart? The VAERS data shows it’s very rare with the children’s vaccine. There were just 15 reports, of which 11 were verified. At the time of the CDC analysis, seven of the children had already recovered and the other four were recovering.

Despite children being less likely to get seriously ill with Covid19, they have still been hit hard by this pandemic. A recent report estimated that in the US alone, 167,082 children under 18 have now lost a parent or caregiver to Covid-19.

That’s more than one out of every 450 children. Nearly 118,000 of those are children under the age of 13.

The real-world data is clearly showing that Pfizer’s children’s vaccine is safe and effective. I hope as many people as possible will take up the offer to get their children vaccinated. I hope everyone gets their booster dose when they are eligible too.

With Omicron pushing at the border to get in, the more of us who are fully vaccinated, the better protected we will all be.

Our immune system changes as we get older.