Feeling the strain of a long wait for a COVID-19 vaccine for young children, parents welcome news of Moderna’s authorization request: ‘It’s like … society has moved on’

Haleigh Hutchinson gave birth to her son late last year in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak and immediately had to watch him undergo heart surgery. Charlie is now a happy, 9-month-old but his heart problems mean that contracting the virus could be dangerous for him.

So Hutchinson, 29, of North Aurora, has been anxiously waiting for a vaccine to be authorized for young children. In the meantime, she stays away from church and other community venues. Her son hasn’t met her family and friends.

“My son and really all the kids who couldn’t get the vaccine are kind of like sitting ducks in this,” Hutchinson said. “It’s like … society has moved on and has made the kids feel like, well, ‘If they die, they die.’ ”

Moderna on Thursday submitted a request to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 6, a welcome development for parents who have faced long waits to vaccinate their youngest children, particularly for those like Hutchinson, who have immunocompromised kids.

Vaccine trials for young children have greater regulatory and ethical concerns and naturally come last after such measures have been tested and authorized for older people. But the long wait, beset with some delays, has stalled a return to normal for some families with babies and toddlers. In February, Pfizer had to delay its request for emergency authorization for the same age group in order to further test a third shot after its two-dose regimen was found to be not as effective in the youngest age bracket.

“It’s a process that has taken longer than anyone really anticipated,” said Dr. Bill Muller, an infectious disease specialist at Lurie Children’s Hospital and the site lead there for the Moderna trials.

The wait partially has to do with how vaccine trials for children are set up, Muller said, but could also be due to resources stretched thin as the FDA and drug companies are in the process of testing and evaluating boosters, treatments for COVID-19 and other vaccines and treatments.

“In the bigger picture of vaccine authorization throughout history, this has still been really quick,” he said.

Muller estimated that it could be several weeks before the FDA makes its decision, as it moves through its normal steps for evaluating vaccine trials.

Meanwhile, parents of young children are feeling the strain.

“It has been so stressful just waiting, and waiting,” said Laura Hohm, mother of a 4-year-old daughter who is not yet eligible. “It seems like for families with children in this age group, it’s been dangled in front of us and then taken away so many times.”

Margot Taylor, a 36-year-old mother in Lincoln Square, has a 2-year-old daughter. She’s rarely eaten out during the pandemic or seen family.

“Today, my husband has four shots of the vaccine and my daughter has none,” she said.

Vaccine trials for children differ from those for adults, which look for whether participants develop a symptomatic case of the virus. For children, researchers track whether the inoculation generates an immune response to determine if it’s effective.

Moderna’s vaccine is currently approved for adults 18 and older, while Pfizer’s vaccine is approved for children 5 and older.

In announcing its authorization request, Moderna said its vaccine had good safety results and a “robust neutralizing antibody response” in children 6 months to under 6 years old. The trials also found that the vaccine had an efficacy rate of 51% in children 6 months to 2 years and 37% in 2 to under 6 years.

While those figures are noticeably lower than the effectiveness of Moderna’s vaccine when it was authorized for adults late 2020, Moderna notes that the trials were conducted during the omicron wave, when vaccines were largely also less effective in preventing infection for adults, though continued to prevent serious hospitalization and death.

Muller said it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison because the earlier adult vaccination trials better “matched” the strain of COVID-19 circulating at the time. He said the vaccines for children may eventually be approved as a three-dose regimen to increase efficacy.

Much still needs to be done to achieve higher vaccination rates of eligible children, aged 5 to 11, as well, he said. Only 38% of children in Illinois in that age range have been fully vaccinated, according to information from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“There’s still is a lot of work to do on messaging for vaccines in general,” Muller said. “It needs to be emphasized that the benefits and safety of the vaccine far exceed the risk.”

mabuckley@chicagotribune.com

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