Despite the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, children are a majorly under-vaccinated group in the United States. This, in part, is due to mixed messaging on how safe the vaccine is for kids.
For more, stream KCBS Radio now.
Dr. David Martinez, a University of North Carolina immunologist who studies immune responses to COVID-19 shots, said on KCBS Radio's "Ask An Expert" that this misinformation is undermining his and fellow scientists' work.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo advised last Monday that children older than 5 should not get vaccinated against the coronavirus if they are healthy.
It "flies in the face of everything we know about immunity in children," Martinez said, reacting to Ladapo's announcement.
Parents have also been swayed to not vaccinate their children after a recent study on the Pfizer vaccine was released, showing that Pfizer was less effective in kids ages 5 to 11 over a period of time.
Martinez explained this was due to the size of the vaccination, as children receive a smaller dose than adults, and due to the fact that the test was done at the height of omicron, which led to the reduction in vaccine efficacy.
"What we're seeing so far is that the immunogenicity, or how well the immune response can occur in these smaller doses, is that the two-dose vaccine response did not get the job done in terms of being able to protect against infection," he explained.
The issue lies in how much vaccine to give and the amount of time in between the first, second and third vaccine, not whether or not the vaccine itself works, Martinez said.
"One thing that we do know from larger studies is that if you extend the interval between the first and the second shot from the standard three weeks to now eight weeks, the immune response is actually markedly improved," he advised. "One potential solution may be to retain the smaller doses in terms of these age groups, but just space them apart."
LISTEN to KCBS Radio
FAVORITE KCBS Radio
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Related
