Speaker 1: It's Friday, March nineteen. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Maderna announced this week that they will begin testing their
Speaker 1: COVID vaccine on children aged six months to eleven years.
Speaker 1: This is the next piece of the puzzle to widen
Speaker 1: the mass vaccination campaign beyond adults. If all goes well,
Speaker 1: health officials believed that junior, high and high school students
Speaker 1: could get their shots in the fall, and elementary school
Speaker 1: students early next year. Peter loftis healthcare reporter at the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Peter,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. The vaccine rollout continues, obviously targeted
Speaker 1: at adults and and those that are most vulnerable right now,
Speaker 1: but the other part of the puzzle is being looked
Speaker 1: into now. Maderna is testing its COVID nineteen vaccine on
Speaker 1: young children. The trial that they're going through is going
Speaker 1: to involve children ages six months to eleven years, and
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, this is kind of the important other part.
Speaker 1: Thankfully kids are spared the worst effects of COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: but they still can get it, and they still can
Speaker 1: transmit it. So Peter tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: what Maderna is doing. The vaccine has been approved for
Speaker 1: use in adults eighteen and older, and same with the
Speaker 1: Johnson and Johnson vaccine. The Fiser vaccine is approved for
Speaker 1: people sixteen and older. So basically the focus of the
Speaker 1: vaccination campaign so far has been on adults because ages
Speaker 1: is an important element and who is vulnerable to severe
Speaker 1: disease and the older you are, the more vulnerable you are,
Speaker 1: and so and so the risk and children of getting
Speaker 1: severe disease is lower relative than to what it is
Speaker 1: of adults, but if there still is some risk, and
Speaker 1: so what the companies have been doing is in steps,
Speaker 1: they've been studying the vaccine in people younger than eighteen,
Speaker 1: and so Fiser and Maderna had already started trials in
Speaker 1: adolescents basically twelve and up, and the results of those
Speaker 1: trials they could be released relatively soon, just seeing whether
Speaker 1: it's safe and effective in them. And now what this
Speaker 1: news this week represents is moving down on the age scale,
Speaker 1: and so Maderna is now testing in kids under twelve
Speaker 1: pretty soon. I think Fiser will also start to study
Speaker 1: I believe in five to eleven year old. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so this will basically complete the testing of the full
Speaker 1: age range, and they want to just see how how
Speaker 1: it performs in kids. Health officials said that if all
Speaker 1: goes according to plan and the studies turn out positive,
Speaker 1: that junior high and regular high school students could have
Speaker 1: access maybe in the fall, and elementary school aged children
Speaker 1: maybe in early so obviously still some time to go
Speaker 1: through there. They are, as you mentioned, testing very young
Speaker 1: kids here, kids as young as six months. That seems
Speaker 1: pretty young. Is there anything that a particular reason why
Speaker 1: they're going that young. Yeah, I think that's grabbing a
Speaker 1: lot of people's attention. It's important to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that there are existing child hood vaccines that are given
Speaker 1: to infants. There was a vaccine trial for a rotavirus
Speaker 1: vaccine about fifteen years ago that I think enrolled about
Speaker 1: seventy thousand babies on whom that vaccine was tested and
Speaker 1: then and it proved to be successful. I think that
Speaker 1: Maderna is just trying to get a sense of how
Speaker 1: it performs in the different age groups. They don't want
Speaker 1: to go any younger than six months for now, at least,
Speaker 1: just because they feel like that's pretty young, and the
Speaker 1: and the and the baby's immune system is less mature
Speaker 1: before that time. So they're going to do it in phases,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna they're going to test different doses in
Speaker 1: kids in the first part of the study to try
Speaker 1: to arrive at what is the appropriate dose, because it
Speaker 1: might be different from what the adult dose level is.
Speaker 1: And then once they arrive at a dose, and they'll
Speaker 1: broaden the study and just get a better assessment of
Speaker 1: how safe and effective it is. The Maderna study, they said,
Speaker 1: is going to be kind of a mind phase two
Speaker 1: and phase three trial. They're looking to enroll about six thousand,
Speaker 1: seven fifty children and all this and then kind of
Speaker 1: go through those two parts that you just mentioned. The dosing,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure isn't to get a lot of attention to,
Speaker 1: especially since the kids are younger, right, their immune systems
Speaker 1: are still developing, so they want to make sure that
Speaker 1: they get that dose it right. They really want to
Speaker 1: strike the right balance between you know, effectiveness on the
Speaker 1: one hand, and any sort of even temporary or transient
Speaker 1: side effects like so we've seen with the adult population
Speaker 1: some of these vaccines, particularly in the two dose vaccines.
Speaker 1: After the second dose can really lay a person low
Speaker 1: for like a day or two and give them symptoms
Speaker 1: like food like symptoms or just headache and fatigue. And
Speaker 1: so you know, it's possible that some of those symptoms
Speaker 1: also could be seen in kids. That's what they need
Speaker 1: to test it for. But I think there's also a
Speaker 1: recognition that that becomes maybe a more more magnified issue
Speaker 1: as parents think about do I want to expose my
Speaker 1: kid to have those side effects, even if it's temporary,
Speaker 1: given the relative risk of COVID nineteen disease to the kids.
Speaker 1: I mean, it will be interesting to see what these
Speaker 1: studies show. As you mentioned, Fiser and others have already
Speaker 1: kind of been looking into some of the stuff, and
Speaker 1: we could get some data there pretty soon. So you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll get some good news out of all of
Speaker 1: this and it'll be safe and effective, and then we
Speaker 1: can have our children vaccinated as well. Peter loftis healthcare
Speaker 1: reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. My pleasure. Thanks. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
Speaker 1: this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort Today's big
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