Pharmaceutical giant Moderna on Wednesday said it would start testing its COVID-19 vaccine on children ages 12 through 17.
The study, listed on Clinicaltrials.gov, is ''designed to primarily evaluate the safety and reactogenicity of a single dose level of mRNA-1273 vaccine administered in 2 doses 28 days apart to an adolescent population'' and will include 3,000 children.
Participants will receive one intramuscular injection on Day 1 and Day 29. Half of the participants will get placebo shots of saltwater.
Moderna’s vaccine has not been studied in children or pregnant women but its coronavirus vaccine has shown to be highly effective in adults. The drugmaker on Monday said complete data from a large study show its vaccine to be 94.1 percent effective.
''Everyone anticipates that when we test this first in adolescents, then older children, then the real small kids, that the Covid vaccine will work,'' Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University and an adviser on vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The New York Times.
But children ''may be more out of sorts than adults for a day or two,'' he said. ''You really do want to know, if it’s given in adolescents, what can parents expect? You really want to be able to tell them clearly how you might feel for 24 or 48 hours after you receive the vaccine. And obviously, we really want to be able to tell parents it works.''
Moderna on Monday said it applied to the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the vaccine for emergency use.
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