Children Volunteer To Test The Safety Of The COVID Vaccine

Protecting children from COVID and getting to herd immunity will depend on children getting vaccinated. But the existing vaccines aren’t designed for most kids. Moderna and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines can only be given to those 18 and older, and Pfizer’s vaccine can only be given to people ages 16 and older. That’s why volunteers like 15-year-old Zoe Campbell and her 12-year-old sister Esme are testing the safety of Moderna’s vaccine for children in a trial at UMass Medical School in Worcester.

“The vaccine has been something we’ve been looking forward to since last year. And with the pandemic, a lot of things feel out of our control. So to be part of that process of making the vaccine available for kids I thought was really, really cool,” said Zoe.

Zoe and Esme are among 70 Massachusetts children participating in Moderna’s nationwide vaccine test of roughly 3,000 children ages 12 to 17. That group has had relatively low rates of infection, and the CDC calls fatal cases “rare,” but cases can still be severe, and vaccinating children is important for public health since they can also spread the virus in their families and communities.

Read the rest of the story at GBH’s website.