this article is republished from healthy debate under a creative commons license. read the original article.
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yes. the pfizer trial looked at about 4700 children who got the vaccine versus a placebo, their immune response, their antibody levels and how well it worked to ward off the virus. it was found to be 90 per cent effective in preventing symptomatic covid compared to a placebo. this includes the delta variant.
while it is true that children are less likely to get severely ill than adults, it can happen and it’s tragic when it does. it is very difficult to predict who will get critically sick and who will not. in children aged 5-11 in the u.s., there have been more than 146 covid related deaths and almost 8300 children have been hospitalized. many of these children were completely healthy with no pre-existing conditions. in canada, we haven’t seen this degree of pediatric illness, but as we loosen restrictions, children will be at higher risk as they are unvaccinated. as a parent, if you can protect your children from any risk, you do it.
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in children aged 5 to 11, health canada recommends the covid vaccine be separated from other vaccinations by 14 days . this is out of an over-abundance of caution to see if there are possible side effects to the covid vaccine specifically. however, the u.s. centres for disease control has not made this recommendation for young children. and for all people 12 and up, you can get it at the same time or separately. because there is more covid circulating than influenza, i would recommend children under 11 get the covid vaccine first and then get the flu vaccine.
there is a very small amount of tromethamine in the vaccine for children. but it is not to treat heart attacks. rather, it is used to regulate acidity in body fluids in cases of metabolic acidosis, which can be the result of various conditions, including bypass cardiac surgery and cardiac arrest. it’s also a common stabilizing ingredient in a lot of medical and non-medical products. it helps the vaccine resist degradation and improve its shelf life. it’s also not new or experimental. tromethamine has been safely used in many products, including the moderna covid-19 vaccine, humalog insulin and other vaccines.
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health canada has approved the doses to be given 21 days apart. but naci is recommending eight weeks between doses because longer intervals could make the vaccine slightly more effective with lower side effects. the specific dosing interval used will be up to the individual provinces.
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mrna technology is not new . we’ve been studying it since the 1960s and doing vaccine trials since 2013. we do have some long-term data on safety of other mrna vaccines. some vaccines for covid (other than astrazeneca and j and j) were built on this research, which is in part why we could develop them so quickly.
this might differ province to province. anyone turning 5 years old in 2021 in ontario is eligible to get the vaccine now. what we don’t know is what to do with children turning 5 in 2022. trials studying children 4 and under with different doses are ongoing so i suspect we may have to wait for the trial results.
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social media, blogs, google could lead you to sites that are deliberately spreading disinformation. so stick to sources that you can trust, such as scienceupfirst . refer to hospital hotlines like sickkids , tegh. reach out to your primary care doctor, get the answers you need and then share the information.