How Soon Can Your Child Get a Covid Shot? Here’s What We Know

(Bloomberg) -- A panel of leading vaccine experts has backed the Covid-19 vaccine for kids age 5 to 11 from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. So how soon can you have your kid roll up their sleeve? There are a few more boxes for regulators to check before shots can begin:

What are the next steps?

First, the Food and Drug Administration needs to decide whether to adopt the experts' recommendation and authorize the vaccine. That's likely to happen some time in the next few days.

Then, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will convene an advisory committee of its own to make further recommendations about who to dispense the shots to, and when. The committee is expected to meet and discuss this Nov. 2-3, however there is no public agenda yet posted for the meeting. The CDC director can adopt those guidelines, edit them or issue her own if she takes issue with what the panel suggests.

Once those officials have all had their say, shots can begin.

Should my child get vaccinated?

The FDA's staff determined, after reviewing Pfizer's clinical trial data of about 4,500 children, that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risk. The FDA's advisers voted 17-0 to authorize the vaccine for emergency use, agreeing with the staff's view based on the facts they had available. Though the vote tally was one-sided, some panelists took issue with what they said was a lack of data on side effects, the prevalence of previous Covid-19 infections in children and the shot’s ability to protect from variants.

Pfizer found, in trial data from 2,250 children, that the vaccine was 90.7% effective in preventing symptomatic cases of Covid-19.

Is the shot the same as what adults are getting?

No. The dose for ages 5 to 11 is smaller — and so is the needle.

Where can I take my child to get a vaccine?

The answer will vary by location, but a good first step would be to contact your pediatrician. Unlike the initial rollout for adults, the U.S. government isn't planning mass vaccination sites for small kids, who take a little more time (and need a little more comfort) when they're getting a shot. The plan instead is to let doctor's offices and pharmacies handle the brunt of the distribution.

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