Should your child get a COVID vaccine? Santa Clara County officials answer FAQs

June 27, 2022June 30, 2022

Should your child get a COVID vaccine? Santa Clara County officials answer FAQs

Aria Shukla, 6, shows off her COVID shot on Nov. 3. Photo by Tran Nguyen.

After years of anxiously awaiting their turn, parents can now give their infants the COVID-19 vaccine — but many questions remain about getting the jab.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week approved vaccinations for children ages six months to 5 years old, but some parents remain unsure. Questions range from side effects to whether all children six months to age 5 need to be vaccinated, or just those facing chronic illnesses.

We spoke to officials at the Santa Clara County Public Health Department and Dr. Nadereh Varamini, a pediatrician with Pediatric Associates at Stanford Children’s Health, to answer some of the most frequently asked questions.

Varamini said not giving young children the jab can lead to hospitalization or death. She added that side effects from studies of thousands of children age 5 and under have been extremely rare and very mild.

How can COVID-19 affect young children?

The county, which started administering the vaccines to children under age 5 on June 21, said this age group had the highest rate of hospitalizations compared to other pediatric groups and one in four of those hospitalized children ended up in the ICU. Nationwide, 442 children in this age group died through June 2. That is more deaths than were caused by any other vaccine-preventable disease among children, officials said. They also said long COVID does occur among children and vaccines reduce the occurrence of long COVID by 15-50%.

How many young children have gotten COVID-19 nationally?

There have been more than two million cases of COVID-19 nationally in children ages six months to age 4 from March 2020 to April 2022. More than half of the 20,000 hospitalizations of children in this age group were healthy without underlying conditions.

How many young children have gotten COVID-19 in Santa Clara County?

According to county officials, there have been 16,653 cases in children under age 5 through June 27.

How many children under the age of 5 have been vaccinated for COVID 19 in Santa Clara County?

According to county officials, 3,106 children have received the vaccine to date at county sites.

Do the risks of COVID outweigh possible side effects of the vaccine for ages 6 months to 5 years old?

While COVID-19 infection tends to be milder in children, county officials said in some situations, children can experience severe complications, including death.

What COVID vaccines are available for children in this age group?

Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both available for children under age 5 in Santa Clara County.

Are the vaccines full doses? Are boosters needed?

The county said the vaccines are specially formulated for the younger age group with lower doses. Two doses are required for Moderna and three for Pfizer. There are no booster shots for this age group at this time.

Is one vaccine better than another for young children? What level of protection do they offer?

County health leaders said both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are “very effective” and offer high levels of protection against serious illness or death. Varamini said vaccines provide better protection and longer immunization against COVID-19 and cover more COVID-19 variants, including the omicron variant.

The Pfizer vaccine is about 75% effective at preventing infection from the omicron variant in children 6 months to 2 years old. It is 82% effective in children 2 to 4 years old. For children ages 6 months to 2 years old, the Moderna vaccine is about 51% effective, and for ages 2 to 5 years old, about 37% effective.

Is the vaccine recommended for all children or just those with chronic medical conditions?

Both the county and Varamini recommend all children get vaccinated.

What are the side effects for this age group?

Varamini said side effects under age 3 are sleepiness and not eating, mild redness at injection site, fever, muscle ache and mild nausea. The county said minimal side effects were found in the clinical trials, with the most common being irritability and drowsiness in the youngest recipients (under 2 years) and pain at the injection site and fatigue for the older group.

Where can children under age 5 be vaccinated?

Children under age 5 can be vaccinated by health care providers, at county mass vaccination sites and participating pharmacies. Vaccinations for younger children may not be available at all participating pharmacies. Families can make appointments for COVID-19 vaccinations here.

Children can also be vaccinated at drop-in clinics.

What percentage of children have had COVID-19?

Santa Clara County has approximately 100,000 residents under age 5. Approximately 16.6% have had COVID-19, according to the county.

Both the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend COVID-19 vaccines for young children. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as six months.

Contact Lorraine Gabbert at [email protected].

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Comments (11)

Joe Smith Jun 27, 2022 at 8:02PM

Anyone remember the days back when health officials and MDs were respected professionals? I miss those days.

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Gloria Jun 27, 2022 at 8:57PM

Fortunately, more and more parents are learning that children in this age group do not need to receive an EAU – “Emergency Use Authorized” inoculation that does not even target the Omicron variant, which makes up 100% of cases according to the CDC.

“Just 18% of parents of children under 5 said they would vaccinate their child against Covid-19 as soon as a vaccine became available according to CNN.”
and
“Nationally only about 29% of children ages 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.”

“Doctors urge CDC to revise stringent COVID-19 measures for kids: They ‘have been steamrolled’ ”
“If you look at the fact that 75% of kids had COVID as of a CDC study back in February 2022 and Omicron has been ubiquitous since then, 80% to 90% plus of kids have already had COVID.
So we’re talking about immunizing those who are already immune for a lot of people.
That just does not make sense.” (Dr Marty Makary, Johns Hopkins health policy expert and surgeon)

So if the child has severe co-morbidities and does not already have immunity from the very contagious Omicron
variant that has been the primary variant since early 2022,
you should discuss with your pediatrician the need for one of the Emergency Use Approved vaccines.

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Bob Jun 28, 2022 at 8:52AM

Do the risks of COVID outweigh possible side effects of the vaccine for ages 6 months to 5 years old?

While COVID-19 infection tends to be milder in children, county officials said in some situations, children can experience severe complications, including death.

Didn’t answer the question. Interesting.

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time to be honest Jun 28, 2022 at 10:44AM

Daycares have been operating since the beginning of the pandemic with virtually zero issues from COVID itself – but massive issues from the County policies that harmed kids so much the last few years – keeping them out of schools and 60% of their faces covered for prolonged periods of time. Zero kids died of SF from COVID, actually ZERO, 0-20 year old people. They are not at risk of severe issues from COVID if they are generally healthy. I would not give my child an emergency use authorization shot for a virus their immune system can handle easily, in 99.8% of cases. This vaccine has not been tested extensively – and no one knows the long term risks – but know kids have virtually no risk if they catch COVID. It is nonsensical.

This is all about scared adults continuing to put the burden of the “pandemic” on kids when the pandemic has been over for two-years now. Get a grip on reality.

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Gloria Jun 28, 2022 at 12:31PM

@Bob, They do not know the answer to that question – both the Pfizer and Moderna study groups were too small to determine severe complication risks – the results were extrapolated based on adults & older children studies.

The choice is up to the parent, but the way the Biden Admin, the CDC and FDA have falsely portrayed the benefits and risks to minor children is alarming.

June 23, 2022, Dr. Marty Makary:
“CDC recommends COVID-19 vaccines for babies, kids under 5.
Here are 6 things parents need to know”

4. Safety was based on a small sample

The small size of the studies in children under 5 makes it nearly impossible to observe rates of rare complications such as myocarditis, which occurs in 1 in 2,650 of 12-17 year-old boys after the 2nd dose.
This complication has been associated with EKG changes in children and even concerning MRI findings months after recovering from myocarditis.
Keep in mind that babies can’t tell you when they have myocarditis.

Each of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID studies in children under 5 reported 1 serious adverse event after receiving the vaccine.
Less serious adverse events (pain, swelling, local reactions) were similar across the vaccine and placebo groups (7.7% vs 4.1% for Moderna; 1% vs 1.5% for Pfizer).
These data do suggest a good safety profile, likely due to the low dose given.
However, time will tell.

As Dr. Eric Rubin, the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, said in October 2021,
“But we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes.”

Establishing safety takes time. The infant rotavirus vaccine, Rotashield, was first thought to be safe. In the original trial, the adverse event (an intestinal malfunction requiring surgery) had been noted in 5 of 10,054 vaccine recipients, but the side effect was not deemed statistically significant. Ultimately, that vaccine was pulled from the market after many more complications were observed.
Similarly, J&J’s vaccine was bannered to be safe until the FDA said otherwise.

By comparison, the polio vaccine was tested in 1.8 million children over a year before it was broadly recommended.

1. The research was inconclusive

The studies were too small to achieve statistical significance when evaluating efficacy against mild or severe COVID-19 infection. As a result, the FDA allowed both companies to extrapolate effectiveness by measuring antibody levels, pointing to data from older children and adults.

There were no cases of severe COVID illness in either the vaccine or placebo group.
The Moderna vaccine had 4,774 children and the Pfizer vaccine had 4,526 (including those who received the placebo).

Pfizer concluded that their vaccine was 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19,
but based it on 3 cases in the vaccine group and 7 cases in the placebo group in a
subset of children who received a 3rd dose.

Even this was not statistically significant.
In fact, it had a confidence statistic so wide, you could drive an aircraft carrier through it. (They reported the largest confidence interval I have ever seen in my 20-year research career).
At one end of the range of possibilities indicated by the confidence interval, the vaccine could be associated with a 370% increased risk of getting COVID-19.
The Moderna trial reported a short-term efficacy of 38% in preventing symptomatic illness–an effect well-known to be transient.

Ironically, there were more overall hospitalizations (unspecified) in the vaccine group.
Out of a total of 7 children requiring hospitalization, 6 were in the vaccine group and 1 was in the placebo group, which was half as large.

The CDC even said in its own slides at their deliberation meeting that data assessing efficacy were poor, characterizing them as “very low certainty” and noting that there are “very serious concerns for imprecision due to study size”. They also noted the very short follow-up time of 1.3 months.

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JL Jun 28, 2022 at 12:53PM

yes, unless your child is immunocompromised and at the direction of their pediatrician.

anything else, is either bad parenting and/or pushing your own political or “muh freedom” beliefs onto your child.

kids already receive a list of vaccines as part of normal childhood development. covid vaccine is just another one on the list.

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- time to be honest Jun 28, 2022 at 4:50PM
  
  That’s just false. People keep comparing vaccines like polio and measles to a COVID vaccine, which doesn’t make any sense. Why? Kids had the highest risk from Polio and Measles, compared to COVID where they have the absolute lowest risk. It’s important to understand what you’re talking about. If anything, the COVID vaccine should be compared to the flu vaccine – which in no way is mandatory or pushed this hard on low-risk populations (the flu is actually worse for kids).
  
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- time to be honest Jun 28, 2022 at 4:52PM
  
  And, NONE of them were done through Emergency Use Authorization and were extensively studied for years. Apples and oranges.
  
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  - JL Jun 29, 2022 at 9:52AM
    
    that’s true, this is still EUA
    
    good thing newsome and the state already passed the law stating covid vaccine will be required for school aged kids once the vaccines receive full (non- EUA) approval from the FDA. can’t argue about it at that point.
    
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    - Time to be Honest Jun 29, 2022 at 12:25PM
      
      It will never happen. So few kids are getting the vaccine because they don’t need it – and CA already lost hundreds of thousands of students from public education, which will result in massive budget issues. Parents have spoken – and they will just continue to leave CA if they push it. For example, less than 30% of 5-11 year old children have been vaccinated. It will be less for children 6-months to 5-years old. Because, again, they don’t need it if generally healthy.
      
      And, it’s just so inconsistent. The most comparable virus to COVID is the flu, which still kills tens of thousands per year with a vaccine available – but no mandate? If you support COVID vaccine mandates, you are a hypocrite if you don’t support flu shot mandates. Or, just really confusing. Because again, you can’t compare COVID to other vaccine requirements like Polio or MMR…which had the biggest impact on kids, while COVID has the lowest.
      
      Stop supporting arbitrary and fear based measures that make no difference. Or, at least be consistent.
      
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    - Time to be Honest Jun 29, 2022 at 12:27PM
      
      And CA lost hundreds of thousands of students due to their COVID lock-down policies which caused much more harm to children and the general population than COVID ever will. Families are tired of the nonsense, which is why so many have left the state. Again, they have left because of the very harmful COVID policies that destroyed the local economy and the mental health of the youth. Leave the kids alone.
      
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Should your child get a COVID vaccine? Santa Clara County officials answer FAQs

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