Moderna gave the first doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to children under the age of 12 – including babies as young as 6 months, the pharmaceutical company announced on Tuesday.
The study is scheduled to enroll 6,750 healthy children in the United States and Canada and is the latest effort to include children in the global vaccination campaign.
Most of the US COVID-19 vaccination effort has so far focused on inoculating adults, who are at an increased risk of developing serious illnesses or dying from the virus.
Among the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use across the country, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson jabs are only authorized for use in adults aged 18 and over, while the Pfizer injection can be administered to people aged 16 years or more.
The United States currently vaccinated almost 12% of the adult population.
However, children can still contract and transmit the virus, and achieving full herd immunity also depends on their vaccination.
Moderna and Pfizer began testing their vaccines on children as young as 12 at the end of last year.
At the time, Dr. Anthony Fauci said it would still take “months” before there was enough data from these clinical tests – as well as information about the “degree of effectiveness and safety” of the vaccine in the adult population – to start vaccinating children.
Fauci then projected earlier this month that high school students could be vaccinated “until autumn”, while elementary school students may not receive doses until “the first quarter of 2022”, Reported CBS.
Moderna’s next combined Phase 2 and Phase 3 test includes two parts, and each enrolled child will receive two injections 28 days apart, according to the company.
In the first part of the study, children will receive different dose levels of the vaccine to determine the amount to be used in the second part of the study.
Two doses of 50 or 100 micrograms will be given to children aged 2 to 12 years, and two doses of 25, 50 or 100 micrograms will be given to children under 2 years old. The first inoculated children will receive the lowest doses, the vaccine manufacturer said.
After the researchers analyze which dose is safer and more effective for each age group, they will begin the second part of the trial, where some children will receive doses of the vaccine and others will receive placebo injections of salt water.
Moderna has not yet released a timetable for this trial.