COVID-19 has been hard for all of us for over a year. Millions of people around the world have gotten sick and over 500,000 people in the U.S. have died of the virus. There is hope, though. Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson have been granted FDA approval for their COVID-19 vaccines. But, despite this, only some people are able to get a vaccine. Vaccines are being used only for frontline healthcare workers, teachers, senior citizens, people with pre – existing conditions and people at the most risk to the virus. And even if there was enough vaccine for all Americans to get vaccinated, kids still wouldn’t be able to get a vaccine.
Vaccines work by giving your body a small amount of the COVID-19 virus, so that your body learns to fight it. By doing this, if your body encounters COVID-19 again, then your body already knows how to fight it off. But, even if there were enough doses of vaccine, everyone still wouldn’t be able to get it. Kids would require a special vaccine because kids’ bodies are different from adults’, and kids’ organs, and immune systems aren’t as developed as adults’ systems. If a kid, say 12 years old, got a vaccine meant for adults, then the dosage of COVID may be too high, or the side effects may be different, so you have to check what the proper formula for the vaccine is in kids.
Right now, Pfizer’s vaccine has authorization for use in people 16 and older, and Moderna’s has approval for people 18 and older. In order to get approval for these vaccines, the makers of the vaccine must be granted approval from the FDA for the vaccine to be used. For the FDA to approve a vaccine, the company has to have large clinical trials, to see if their vaccine is safe and effective. If all of this is successful, then, the makers can start producing their vaccine for public use.
So when will kids get a vaccine? Right now, Pfizer is doing trials for their vaccine in kids between the ages of 12 and 15, and Moderna is doing trials for kids ages 12 – 17. According to WebMD, “COVID-19 vaccines for children older than 12 years may be authorized by late spring or early summer, but it may be late 2021 or 2022 before vaccines are authorized for those younger than 12, the doctors said.”
Even though vaccines are out, and ones for younger people are just around the corner, there’s still a lot of work to do. It will be a while before everyone is vaccinated, and everything goes back to normal. The vaccine makers have never made these vaccines before, so they don’t have enough mass production facilities for these vaccines. Also, once the vaccines are made, they also have to be distributed to vaccination sites, and appointments have to be made, so there are a lot of things that must happen before shots go in arms. That’s why it is so important to keep wearing your mask, social distancing, and washing your hands.
