New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘A GOOD THING TO DO ’
Couple enrolls sons in Moderna vaccine trial
NEW HAVEN — Lee Cruz wants his sons, Pablo, 11, and Mateo, 6, to be as enriched as possible, socially and emotionally, during a pandemic that has altered things such as play and school for public health reasons.
Cruz said that is why he and his wife signed up Pablo and Mateo for a clinical pediatric trial at Yale
University for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Moderna. The couple said they also are concerned about racial and ethnic equity in vaccine trials and distribution.
Cruz also said he knows balancing his sons’ social development comes with certain risks and trade-offs. For example, although it is unlikely for Pablo and Mateo to fall seriously ill from the virus
if all public safety protocols are followed, Cruz is 61 and it is ordinary for the family to have weekly Shabbat dinners with his wife’s parents, he said.
The trial, which accepts children between six months and 11 years old, is randomized, placebo-controlled and could involve administering up to three dose levels of the vaccine, according to a Moderna abstract shared with the Register.
Cruz’s wife, Sarah Miller, said she participated in medical trials as a student herself and her sons have participated in medical research before — although none of those prior trials involved shots.
Miller said she is not worried about the safety, as real-world evidence about the efficacy of the Moderna vaccine in adults has begun to amass.
“It seems like a good thing to do for them and for our family and for everybody else so we can get this over with sooner rather than later,” she said. “I would certainly feel more comfortable with them being out in the community; we did sign them up for some alloutdoor summer programs.”
Yale University researchers already have been part of an international initiative to test the safety of vaccines through clinical trials; over the summer, Yale researchers initiated a clinical trial for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in 12- to 15-year-olds.
Pfizer-BioNTech announced the results Wednesday of the trial involving 2,260 children between the ages of 12 and 15, showing 100 percent efficacy, and said the companies plan to submit the results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Medical research also has shown that children are least likely to suffer the gravest effects of COVID-19, although Yale New Haven Hospital reported Tuesday that six pediatric patients currently are hospitalized with the virus.
For Cruz, having his sons participate also raises important issues of racial and ethnic equity. According to “provisional data” offered by the city Health Department, about 49 percent of people vaccinated in New Haven at the start of February were white, despite non-Hispanic white people making up roughly 29.5 percent of the city’s population according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Cruz said he believes it’s important as a Puerto Rican father for people of all races to get vaccinated.
“It has historically been true that minorities have disproportionately been misserved by the scientific and medical community,” Cruz said. “I think that great strides have been made to make it possible for that to not be true, including the participation of Black and brown medical professionals and scientists in the development of this (vaccine) and many other new technologies.”
“We have hopes that once we move to a place where there’s confidence in the effectiveness of the vaccine that we have for
adults through trials with children, that will open the door for kids to be able to go back to school where many, many children in New Haven get so many of the supports they need — from food to education to community,” Cruz said.
New Haven’s schools stayed closed to students from the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 through the end of the year, although district officials began to reopen elementary schools in January 2021. In early March teachers became eligible for the vaccine in Connecticut regardless of age,
meaning most teachers are expected to receive their second dose of the vaccine this week.
New Haven students up to eighth grade can attend school in person either two or four days a week while wearing masks and remaining several feet apart from each other. As a leader in the organized parent group NHPS Advocates, Miller was among the voices urging the school district to keep schools closed while community case rates were high and there was not a communitywide mass vaccination program underway.
Miller said she has received confirmation that her sons are enrolled in the trial, but she had not received any further instructions as of Wednesday. She heard from a friend who tried to enroll their child that they were placed on a waiting list, indicating to her that the trial is fully-enrolled.
Although their parents are enthusiastic, both Mateo and Pablo expressed reluctance about receiving a shot.
“I’m guessing it’ll hurt a lot, a lot, a lot,” said Mateo.
Although Mateo said there is “good and bad” to learning from home, where his parents have kept him and his brother, he said he misses the opportunity to talk with friends during breaks.
“We can only talk to the teacher,” he said.
Pablo said he hopes that there will be a version of the vaccine that is inhaled nasally instead of injected into his arm.
“I still don’t want to get the shot,” he said. “Masks aren’t really that bad.”