Children may have longer wait for vaccine

The pandemic has many parents asking two burning questions. First, when can I get a vaccine? And second, when can my kids get it?

It may come as a surprise that the answers are not the same. Adults may be able to get a vaccine by next summer. But their kids will have to wait longer. Perhaps a lot longer.

Thanks to the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed and other programs, a number of COVID-19 vaccines for adults are already in advanced clinical trials. But no trials have yet begun in the United States to determine whether these vaccines are safe and effective for children.

“Right now, I’m pretty worried that we won’t have a vaccine available for kids by the start of next school year,” said Dr. Evan Anderson, a pediatrician at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine.

On Friday, Anderson and his colleagues published a commentary in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases in which they called for vaccine makers to get their act together. They titled it, “Warp Speed for COVID-19 Vaccines: Why are Children Stuck in Neutral?”

The search for a COVID-19 vaccine started as soon as researchers isolated the virus in January. Teams of developers across the world began creating vaccines based on different techniques. For example, some used inactivated coronaviruses that stimulated the immune system to make its own antibodies; others delivered viral genes into the body, triggering immune cells into action.

Once they were ready to test those vaccines, they started down a well-worn path of rigorous protocols developed over decades to determine if a vaccine is safe and effective. Vaccines require especially strict tests because they’re fundamentally different from drugs, which are intended for a limited number of people who are sick with some particular disease. Vaccines, on the other hand, are given to millions of healthy people to prevent them from getting sick in the first place.

After testing a vaccine on animals, developers start clinical trials on people. These trials come in three phases, going from small to large. Phase 1 and 2 trials let vaccine developers figure out which dose will likely be safest, while also delivering the best immune protection.

Phase 3 trials, the last stage in vaccine testing, are carried out on thousands or tens of thousands of volunteers. It’s during these studies that scientists can get clear evidence that a vaccine protects people from a disease. They can also reveal side effects that were missed by smaller studies.

Many vaccines — including ones for measles, polio and tetanus — were designed from the outset to be given to children but still were tested on adults first.