For kids under age 5 years who can now be vaccinated against COVID-19, it’s okay to work the first dose into the regular vaccine schedule on a well visit, pediatricians said.
Though the littlest kids get the largest number of simultaneous shots in general per the CDC child and adolescent immunization schedule, there’s no reason to think that adding the first dose of either COVID-19 vaccine would be a problem, experts said.
“If you have a 4-year-old or a 2-year-old coming in to get [their regularly scheduled] boosters, you can give the COVID vaccine at the same time, and then bring them back for their next doses,” Tina Q. Tan, MD, of Northwestern University in Chicago, told MedPage Today.
The safety of giving COVID-19 vaccines concurrently with other shots is based on adult data, and experience with kids ages 5-11, who’ve been getting the Pfizer vaccine since it was authorized for this age group in October 2021, Tan said.
“We know you can give it at the same time without interfering with the immunity of the other vaccines,” she said.
C. Buddy Creech II, MD, MPH, of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, and president of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, agreed that there’s “no reason” to give the COVID vaccine separately from other pediatric vaccinations.
“The [COVID] vaccine on its own is safe and effective and we understand the side effect profile of it,” Creech said during an Infectious Diseases Society of America press briefing. “We would anticipate that there would be no cause for concern giving it with other vaccines.”
Yet he did caution that there hasn’t specifically been research on giving the COVID vaccine in combination with all childhood vaccines, “so we don’t exactly know what it looks like in terms of fever and side effect profile.”
He said it would be good to understand from where a side effect truly emerges: “You want to be able to rightly assign it to a vaccine,” he said.
Jason Newland, MD, MEd, of Washington University in St. Louis, said at the briefing that there are already national systems in place, such as the CDC V-Safe tracker, that should be utilized to track any potential safety issues.
“We have a great system for vaccine safety,” Newland said. “Let’s make sure we’re reporting anything that’s happening. We’re continuing to demonstrate how safe these vaccines are. That will help people who maybe haven’t decided because they want to see the safety. We have the system to show them that.”
Tan and Creech said decisions about co-administering COVID vaccines with other childhood vaccines will likely be made by individual practices.
While some practices may separate COVID from other vaccines because that’s what was done in clinical trials, Creech said, “we realize that if we need to give them with other vaccines, we have the confidence that we can do that.”
Pediatricians will “likely decide based on what is easiest for the practice,” Tan said. For some, that may mean giving only the Pfizer vaccine, which they’ve been using since it has long been authorized for kids ages 5 and up, while the Moderna vaccine was only recently authorized for kids ages 17 and under.
One important aspect to emphasize to parents is that kids who get the Pfizer vaccine won’t be protected until they receive that third dose, which could pose challenges for compliance. Moderna, on the other hand, offers full protection within 2 weeks of its second dose.
Ideally, Tan said, decisions about vaccine delivery should be made with the idea of maximizing the opportunity to get kids fully protected against COVID-19: “We don’t want to miss any opportunities.”
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
