Covid-19 vaccines for children under age 5 are being made available this week in the United States. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have approved the safety and effectiveness of immunizers. As with any vaccine, however, it is possible for them to have some side effects.
Safety data from Moderna and Pfizer, reviewed by the FDA and CDC, found that potential side effects were mostly mild and short-lived.
For parents and caregivers who plan to vaccinate their children, pediatricians say there are a few things to watch out for — often the same effects adults or older children may have experienced after vaccinations.
Mild, short-lived side effects
“Overall, I think the most common side effects of any of the vaccines are still the most common that we see in virtually any child who receives any immunization,” said Dr. Grant Paulsen. He is the principal investigator for Pfizer and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials for children ages 6 months to 11 years.
Symptoms usually include pain at the injection site and sometimes swelling or redness.
“These are all side effects that I would rate as quite common that most parents who took their kids to the doctor for their various hepatitis and tetanus shots and the like were probably pretty used to it,” Paulsen said.
As for systemic or bodily symptoms, the most common were fatigue or drowsiness. Some children have experienced irritability or dizziness, loss of appetite, headache, abdominal pain or discomfort, enlarged lymph nodes, mild diarrhea, or vomiting. But they all improved quickly.
“It’s very similar to the side effects we’ve seen in older children or adults. About 24 hours later, some children don’t feel so well, they feel tired, they don’t have the same appetite. But fortunately, there were no serious side effects from these vaccines,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator, told CBS on Monday.
“And again, after giving these vaccines to millions of children, it’s really comforting to know that, for young children, these immunizers are extremely safe.”
Side effects were mild to moderate and were much less frequent with this young age group than with older ages, Paulsen said.
“My conception for parents is really [que] the side effects shouldn’t be alarming,” Paulsen said.
possible fever
Children were slightly more likely to have a fever with the Moderna vaccine; happened to about a quarter of study participants, versus less than 10% with Pfizer. Most fevers were mild. Less than 1% of all study participants had a fever that reached 40°C.
“That was rare, but I feel like if we’re not honest with the parents, when these things come out, it’s going to be worrying,” Paulsen said.
Since fevers were not common, Paulsen does not recommend pre-treating a child by giving him a fever-lowering drug before the injection. If the child develops a fever, he said, parents can give ibuprofen or acetaminophen.
“Odds are, most kids will do well and have minimal problems.”
No cases of myocarditis
Scientists who conducted tests on the younger children were also watching closely to see if any of the children had problems with myocarditis — an inflammation of the heart muscle — because there were some cases among older children and adults. In most of them, the symptoms disappeared quickly.
However, myocarditis was not considered a problem in trials in young children.
“Of course we have all the mechanisms in place once we start vaccinating children next week. if we start to see [efeitos mais graves], all these bells and whistles are going to ring and draw our attention to this,” said Dr. Claudia Hoyen, director of pediatric infectious diseases at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. “But we don’t expect to see that. We also haven’t seen this in children aged 5 to 11.”
“Extra layer of protection”
As children develop the severe form of Covid-19 less often than adults, some parents may wonder whether they should be concerned about vaccinating their little ones. Covid-19, however, has been “pretty common” in children, said Jha.
He stated that nearly 70% of children have been infected at some point, but they can always get it again – and even if it was mild the first time, that doesn’t mean it will be the same way the next time around.
“Is it still worth getting the vaccine it really does offer an extra level of protection, an extra layer of protection. What vaccines do is keep kids out of the hospital which is why they are so effective and everyone deserves that protection”, explains the doctor.
Dr Suchitra Rao says it’s important to keep in mind that Covid is now one of the vaccine-preventable diseases with the highest fatality rate.
“If we look at that age group, we’ll see that Covid has killed over 200 children aged 6 months to 5 years since January 2020. And if we want to compare that to something like the flu, those numbers are actually higher than what we’ve seen. annually to all children under age 18 from the flu,” said Rao, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
“We are getting vaccines against measles and against pneumococcal disease and meningitis, diseases that are really causing more deaths,” he added. “Safety in this younger age group is actually really, really good and even better than in other groups.”
Rao said some parents asked her if they should be concerned about long-term side effects. She assures them that if there were any, they would have appeared in clinical trials.
“The FDA and then the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and all these governing groups that make these recommendations really do an excellent job of evaluating the safety and efficacy and looking at all the manufacturing data on these immunizers, and it’s a rigorous and comprehensive review,” said Rao.
“I think the fact that it took a little longer for the agency to authorize these photos on these kids is really revealing because they needed to be absolutely sure as this is such a vulnerable group,” he explained.
Source: CNN Brasil
