The president of Moderna revealed there’s a chance that teenagers could start getting vaccinated before the start of the next school year.
Dr. Stephen Hoge, the head of the company, provided an updated timeline of when children and young adults could potentially start receiving the coronavirus vaccine during a Wednesday morning interview on the Today show. Currently, the Moderna vaccine is not available for people under the age of 18 as they are not eligible for it. Children are also less at risk of developing a serious case of COVID-19 compared to people older than them.
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“We’ve already completed enrollment in our teen COVE trial, which is adolescents 12 to 17,” he said. “We expect to have data from that 12 to 17 teen COVE study, hopefully perhaps by the summer, so that we could be vaccinating adolescents going into the school year.”
Hoge explained that developing a vaccine for children younger than 12 will likely “take longer” because “you do need to be a little more cautious and progressive in working down dose levels in the kids to find the right dose,” adding that the vaccine’s development will “probably take the better part of this year to complete.”
He expressed optimism that children will ultimately be able to get the vaccine, saying they “certainly haven’t seen anything concerning in prior work that would suggest we can’t use the vaccine in children.”
Hoge’s comments came a day after Moderna began their child vaccine study, which is being conducted with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (a part of the National Institutes of Health) and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (a part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).
The first participants in the study have been given their initial dose, though the dosage will vary among age groups as doctors attempt to determine the appropriate dosage to use.
“We are pleased to begin this Phase 2/3 study of mRNA-1273 in healthy children in the U.S. and Canada, and we thank NIAID and BARDA for their collaboration,” Stephane Bancel, the chief executive officer of Moderna, said. “It is humbling to know that 53 million doses have been administered to people in the U.S. We are encouraged by the primary analysis of the Phase 3 COVE study of mRNA-1273 in adults ages 18 and above, and this pediatric study will help us assess the potential safety and immunogenicity of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate in this important younger age population.”
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The company plans to enroll 6,750 pediatric participants in the United States and Canada for the study. Each child will be given both doses 28 days apart, the same vaccine schedule for adults.
The two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been deemed safe for people 16 and older, while the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have been authorized for adults 18 and older.
