Stanford University has begun a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trial on children younger than five years old.
It's the only site on the West Coast to test the vaccine.
"We want our kids to be protected from the virus, and not to spread it to others if they do get infected," Zinaida Good of Palo Alto, whose three-year-old son Andel waited for his turn for the jab told Mercury News.
The family's seven-month-old baby is scheduled for a shot next month.
The goal of the trial at Stanford Health Care, according to the paper, is to identify the strongest dose with the fewest side effects.
So far, the Centers for Disease and Prevention reports that about 77 million people in American have received the COVID-19 vaccines. But children remain in danger. But, with about a quarter of the U.S. population being under the age of 18, the nation cannot reach herd immunity with this group being inoculated.
"We want to make sure that children have access to vaccines not just for themselves but for the community," said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a Stanford professor of pediatrics and infectious disease and the principal investigator of the trial.
Additionally, unknown answers remain about variants and how they will impact young people.
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at UCSF, who is not involved in the Stanford research emphasized the need for children to get the vaccine. "We need everyone in the population immunized."
Chin-Hong, a father of two, said there is an additional concern: children's potential vulnerability.
"COVID is a shape-shifting virus, and there may be a variant in the future that may affect younger individuals," said Dr. Chin-Hong. In Michigan, he noted, the increase of the U.K.'s B.1.1.7 variant is coinciding with a surge of cases in young adults, perhaps through youth sports.
Last month, Pfizer announced that its vaccine was safe and effective in adolescents as young as 12.
So the vaccine is now being tested in much younger children.
