Vaccines Progressing Quickly, but Not for Kids

Possible one won't be ready before the start of the 2021 school year
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 22, 2020 3:54 PM CDT
Vaccines Progressing Quickly, but Not for Kids
A volunteer is injected with a vaccine as part of an Imperial College vaccine trial in London.   (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, FILE)

Work on vaccines is speeding along in the US, but one group will likely have a longer wait than everyone else: children. Trials currently underway involve adults only—and it's too dangerous to simply apply those results to kids, explains the New York Times. "Right now I'm pretty worried that we won’t have a vaccine available for kids by the start of next school year," says Dr. Evan Anderson, a pediatrician at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. He's talking about the traditional start of the school year in 2021. He and other medical experts co-wrote a new paper titled "Warp Speed for COVID-19 Vaccines: Why are Children Stuck in Neutral?" per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Anderson and his team argue that trials involving children should already be underway—they could have started once the solid Phase 2 results for adults came in this summer—probably starting with older kids and lower dosages. He notes that the idea "isn't novel," with children involved in the trials for vaccines of other diseases such as Ebola. More than 100 children in the US have died from COVID, according to the paper, which points out that children also can spread the disease to adults. "We owe it to our children to not delay moving forward initial studies to evaluate promising vaccine candidates," Anderson told reporters Monday. (More coronavirus vaccine stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X