COLUMBUS, Ohio — While federal regulators await more vaccine data for kids under 5, some families with young kids are feeling uneasy about society’s return to normal.
What You Need To Know
- Drug manufacturers are expecting more data soon for children under 5
- In the U.S., only about a quarter of children 5-11 are fully vaccinated
- Pfizer said its vaccine for younger kids could be ready in May
“We're still in a little bit of a holding pattern for the kids under five,” said pediatrician Dr. Bonnie Pugh, president of the board at Central Ohio Primary Care.
The Food and Drug administration said on Feb. 11 that it would delay a decision on expanding age eligibility for the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine until data is available on a three-dose version.
It was a significant pivot. Early last month, officials were preparing for a possible imminent rollout of the Pfizer vaccine for children 6 months through 4 years old and the federal government had even begun taking orders from states for the lower-dose version.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a recent CBS interview he now hopes to have approval for a vaccine for children ages 6 months through 4 years old “potentially in May, if it works.”
Skylar Blannin, 45, of Bexley, Ohio, said she was fortunate that her daughters, 5 and 9, were old enough to get the vaccine in November. She said she has empathy for those who are trying to navigate the pandemic with younger kids who aren't yet eligible.
“I know some families with kids, young ones, who have had to go to the ER when they've had COVID,” she said. “It's still a real disease for them.”
Even though case numbers are lower, her daughters are still wearing masks. Blannin said they have made it this far without contracting COVID-19, so she wants to try to keep it that way.
Blannin said she kept her daughter in a virtual preschool program last year because vaccines weren’t available and she worried masking would be hard for preschoolers.
“She’s still in pre-K this year, in-person now because we knew that all the adults were vaccinated, I knew that kid vaccines were coming, and we actually were fortunate to find a really small preschool class where I knew that safety protocols were great,” she said.
Pugh said the recent decline in COVID-19 case numbers since the omicron surge should offer some comfort for anxious parents. The lower numbers mean reduced risks for everyone, including kids too young to be vaccinated, she said.
“When we look at kids getting COVID, their symptoms tend to not be as severe but, of course, we want to help prevent any hospitalizations we can, so knowing that they're unable to be vaccinated, it's difficult,” Pugh said. “I do think with the numbers coming down, we should start to try to feel a little more comfortable with letting our kids be kids again.”
She hopes a vaccine for younger kids will come with time, and she said Central Ohio Primary Care will make it conveniently available for families as soon as one is ready.
Pfizer submitted data to the FDA for a two-shot regimen for the younger kids at a lower dosage, but the immune response in children aged two to four underwhelmed, Pugh said.
“The dosage that the company had chosen to use for the younger kids was less for 2 to 5 and 0 to 6 months of age than it is for the current 5 to 12 year olds,” she said. “It just didn't produce the immunity that we were looking for.”
The company is awaiting data from the three-dose clinical trial, which could be ready in April.
Moderna reports it will soon have data from a two-dose trial for the 2-5 age group, which uses a larger dose than the Pfizer vaccine for kids. Pugh noted Pfizer has been farther along than Moderna in terms of getting approval for younger age groups. The Moderna vaccine has only been approved for adults in the U.S.
Anna Godby, 35, of Dayton, said she worries about the virus as a mother of four young children, but she has not gone forward with vaccinating her kids.
“They still wear masks when we go out somewhere, even though pretty much everyone in our area, it seems, has stopped wearing masks,” Godby said.
She and her husband got the vaccine, but she was deterred from getting a booster or vaccinating her older kids because she had unpleasant side effects following vaccination.
Godby’s circumstances aren’t unusual. While 75% of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated, only about a quarter of children ages 5 through 11 are fully vaccinated. Four and a half months have passed since that age group became eligible.
“Any time you're dealing with little tiny kids, it's good to kind of be more cautious,” Godby said. “If another really bad variant came around, where we feel like the benefits of protecting them from that outweighed the risks, we would definitely consider it. I mean, they're fully vaccinated in every other way.”
Molly Sowry, 33, also of Dayton, has an infant and an 8-year-old. She said her family members, who are not vaccinated, recently contracted COVID-19. She was sick for a week, but they have all recovered well.
“It’s a scary topic, like I do vaccinate my kids, but those vaccines have been around for a long time. They've been tested,” she said. “We don't know how this is going to affect our kids later.”
Sowry said she isn’t as worried about COVID-19 now they have recovered from the virus, but she said it was stressful before then thinking about what the virus might do to her infant.
Pugh understands the hesitancy from parents about vaccinating young kids. She emphasized the rigorous safety studies and the vaccine’s ability to reduce the chances of severe disease, even in age groups where bad outcomes are less common.
“The vaccine is really proven to prevent severe disease and hospitalization,” she said. “Yes, maybe children don't have as significant symptoms or as high a rate of hospitalization as adults and older adults, or people who have underlying medical disease, but certainly kids, healthy kids, still do get hospitalized from COVID-19, and the vaccine is best at preventing those hospitalizations.”