Research begins on COVID vaccine for children 6 months to 6 years old

A team of doctors in Quebec are looking to see if the COVID-19 vaccine will work in children as young as six months old.

“Families are excited to help out and see if we can get another vaccine approved in kids,” said Dr. Soren Gantt, Infectious Disease Specialist leading the vaccine trial.

“Everybody’s working quickly to try and get the data that [is] required to be able to get approval for the vaccine, while still taking all the appropriate steps to ensure its safe and effective at this dose and this age group.”

The vaccine study center of the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal’s Pierrefonds, is one of 100 sites in North America studying Moderna’s mRNA vaccine – Spike Vax – in babies, toddlers and young children. The vaccine is already approved for those 12 and up, and is currently being reviewed by Health Canada for children as young as 6-years-old.

“What we’re looking for is to see [if] the antibodies made in response to the vaccine are at least as high in kids in this age group receiving this dose… as they were in adolescents and adults receiving this dose.”

The teen and adult dose is 100 micrograms. For those six to twelve, it’s 50 micrograms. Six month olds to 6-year-olds will receive 25 micrograms of the same vaccine, which will be studied on 50 participants in Montreal and 12,000 across Canada and the United States.

“They get randomized to either receiving the vaccine or a placebo,” explained Gantt. “There’s a 75 per cent chance in this that a child would get the vaccine.”

Although data for the trial may only be submitted in spring 2022, Montrealer Caroline Vouligny who has a 7-month-old son is already on board with vaccinating her baby.

“I’d rather get him the vaccine and let’s say I did everything I could to protect him, than the other way around like he gets COVID, gets hospitalized and I’m thinking oh no I did not do my job as a parent to protect him,” said the mother.

“COVID-19 certainly can be severe in young kids, albeit rarely, there’s also a post-infectious complication multi-systemic-inflammatory-syndrome in children which is also dangerous. If given the opportunity to get a safe and effective vaccine, that option is probably worthwhile even though kids are less commonly, severely affected,” explained Gantt.

“The Omicron variant now has everybody worried and rightly so. The sooner we stop transmission at a global level, the sooner we’re gonna get back to normal.”