Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are now available for infants. As a parent, here is what you need to know

If you are a parent of a young child, you might have a lot of questions now that the U.S Food and Drug Administration authorized on June 17 the emergency use of the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months of age.

As California public health officials rolled out the distribution of the infant and toddler vaccines to physicians and clinics this week, experts discussed during a June 23 media briefing on Zoom the benefits of vaccination not only for the young children but for the whole family.

The approval comes on the heels of news that COVID-19 is now the fifth-leading cause of death in children one to four years old, and the fourth leading cause of death in children younger than one, according to Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC) data released this month.

“We’ve seen an increase in cases in California. This is due to the highly contagious Omicron variants that have been circulating. So, there is definitely still a need for vaccinations for the whole population,” said Dr. Lucía Abascal, with the state Department of Public Health. “But now we have a new population that has a vaccine available for them. This is very important.”

Abascal said that in California, “we’re looking at 2.2 million children that will be eligible to receive this vaccine. So definitely a very big state with a very big group of eligible children.”

Abascal, who also works at UCSF as a global researcher focusing on vaccine uptake, the number of people vaccinated with a certain dose of a vaccine in a certain time period, said there is the misconception that Omicron variant is milder.

Abascal said children’s data for this age group shows that hospitalizations picked the record in January and February when the Omicron surge started.

“There is a need to vaccinate young kids. The misconception that kids are safe, that nothing happens to kids, is wrong,” Abascal said. “We have more and more evidence that kids are at an acute risk of being hospitalized for COVID. We’ve seen some deaths.”

Abascal said children who get COVID-19 can also suffer from multi-inflammatory syndrome, as well as long COVID.

Since many parents might wonder how the vaccine got approved, Abascal went over a little bit of what the steps for the FDA approval were.

That includes an independent expert panel that went over the data that both Moderna and Pfizer submitted, and then voted unanimously to recommend that the FDA approve of vaccines.

Abascal said that data that was presented at the FDA meeting is public record to create trust and transparency and people can review that data.

And why did the FDA approve the vaccines?

“Because the vaccine was shown to be effective,” Abascal said, adding that it was effective for the different variants that are circulating now. “We know that the vaccine works.”

Abascal said safety profiled of both vaccines showed that both vaccines were safe.

After the FDA approval, Abascal said the CDC then makes a public health recommendation from the federal level to states like California who in turn also goes over the data and decided to get the vaccine for children in the state.

According to Abascal, the state started working directly with the pediatricians to get enrolled in a program to receive the doses they might need to cover around 85% of the state’s children.

However, since federal regulations don’t allow pharmacists to vaccinate children under the age of three, there is a small group in the newly eligible population that can be vaccinated at the pharmacy but the bigger group – six months to three years old – will need to go directly to either their pediatricians or small community clinics in the county where the children live.

“So, it will be very important that parents reach out to the care providers,” Abascal said.

“The state has purchased enough vaccines for every child in California and they will start coming in batches,” Abascal said, adding that this week they expected to receive around half a million vaccines to start vaccinating children.

In the city of Fresno, the nonprofit organization Cultiva La Salud – in partnership with Pinnacle Training System- hosted a vaccination clinic on June 23 at Legacy Commons Apartments Community Center for families to provide the COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as six months, toddlers, young children. Teens, adults, and seniors were also vaccinated in addition to infants.

In Fresno County, Dr. Rais Vohra, Interim Health Officer for the Department of Public Health said, “having the vaccine available for younger children is critical in keeping them safe and protecting them from the worst outcomes of COVID-19.”

On June 20, the Fresno County Department of Public Health began distributing the infant and toddler vaccines to physicians and clinics who will be administering the vaccines.

COVID-19 vaccine appointments will be available at https://myturn.ca.gov beginning June 21. If you live in Fresno County, you can visit www.fcdph.org/covid19vax for current information, guidance, and resources, including pediatric provider sites and a list of upcoming community vaccination clinics.

“There’s a lot of work to do informing parents, really getting them to understand the needs that exists for these vaccines,” Abascal said.

Something that might be tricky or confusing to parents is the vaccination schedule for Moderna and Pfizer.

The Pfizer vaccine is administered as a three-dose series. The first two doses are three weeks apart (21 days) and the third dose is eight weeks (60 days) after the second dose.

The Moderna vaccine is administered as a two-dose regimen, four weeks apart.

Children are considered fully vaccinated 2 weeks after completing the primary series of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Common COVID-19 vaccine side effects in children include pain at the injection site, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, joint pain, and fever. Side effects last a few days and are normal signs that the immune system is building protection against COVID-19.

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