COVID-19 Vaccine Trials In Children To Be Conducted In The US

Illustration (CDC / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The drug company Pfizer plans to start trials of the COVID-19 vaccine in children aged 12 years. Many parents were so enthusiastic about the plan that they enrolled their children as volunteers. This will be the first COVID-19 vaccine trial in children in the United States (US).

As reported by CNN , one of the trials was carried out by the Cincinnati Children's Hospital medical team. They have tested the COVID-19 vaccine on teenagers aged 16 and 17 this week. Meanwhile, trials for children aged 12 to 15 years have been registered and will be processed immediately, said the Director of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Research Center Robert Frenk.

Meanwhile, Pfizer said via its official website that it has obtained permission from the US Food and Drug Administration to register 12-year-old children for vaccine trials. "We really think vaccines for adolescents and children will be very important to control COVID-19," said Frenck.

Frenk explained, although more cases of COVID-19 were experienced by parents, this did not mean that children did not experience it at all. "It's not an infection that doesn't exist in children," said Frenk.

Frenk further explained that children can develop serious diseases and also die from COVID-19, said Frenck. They can also spread the virus to others who are more susceptible, including parents, grandparents, health workers, and others. In addition, children can develop a rare but serious side effect of the COVID-19 viral infection called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children or MIS-C.

Frenck also believes more children are infected with COVID-19 than official data shows. "I think we may be detecting the number of infected children because they are not sick enough that parents say they need to see a doctor," he said.

Testing of various groups

The US Food and Drug Administration has asked companies working on creating a COVID-19 vaccine to test it in various groups. This group includes people who normally miss drug and vaccine trials, such as the elderly, blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

Pfizer is one of four companies whose vaccines have entered Phase 3 clinical trials in the US. It said it had registered nearly 38,000 volunteers in the trial. More than 31,000 of them have received a second injection for two shots.

Frenck said more than 90 people had responded to an ad looking for youth volunteers for trials. Pfizer is developing a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine with Germany's BioNtech.

Pfizer's vaccine uses chunks of the virus's genetic material to induce immunity against the coronavirus. "If regulatory approval or authorization is obtained, the company hopes to produce globally up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and potentially 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021," said Pfizer.