Kids may not be recommended for COVID-19 vaccination initially says CDC

Washington

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccines may not be initially recommended for children when they become available.

Children, who rarely have severe COVID-19 symptoms, have not yet been tested for any experimental coronavirus vaccine. The CDC said so far early clinical trials have only included non-pregnant adults, noting the recommended groups could change in the future as clinical trials expand to recruit more people.

Health experts also claimed the delay in kids vaccine testing is appropriate, warning that a vaccine should be tested in adults first to ensure it's safe and effective before being tested in children.

"We wouldn't start injecting five-year-olds before we knew what this vaccine did in adults," Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville told ABC news.

"Kids are not little adults, they have very different immune systems, and you might need to have a completely different kind of vaccine for kids," Dr. Anita McElroy, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, quoted in ABC's report.

Pfizer has said it will enroll children, who are capable of passing on the virus to high-risk groups, as young as 12 in its large, late-stage COVID-19 vaccine trial, while AstraZeneca has said a sub-group of patients in a large trial will test children between five to 12.

A recent study shows kids can carry coronavirus in their noses for up to three weeks, giving new information about children as carriers of the virus, and their potential capacity to be spreading it onwards.

In addition, data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association shows that over 624,000 children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic.

There is no vaccine for COVID-19 yet, but a handful of companies such as Pfizer and Moderna Inc MRNA.O are in final-stage trials of their experimental vaccines.

The CDC also said on Wednesday that any coronavirus vaccine would, at least at first, be used under the Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization, and that there could be a limited supply of vaccines before the end of 2020.

In case of limited supply, some groups may be recommended to get a COVID-19 vaccine first, the CDC said.

Coronavirus vaccines should be rolled out in four phases, with the initial supply going to frontline health workers and first responders, an independent expert panel tapped by top U.S. health officials recommended earlier this month.