Covid vaccine for Australian kids: Everything you need to know

The Pfizer vaccine will be available to children between five and 11 years from January. Here’s everything you need to know about the Covid jab for kids.

Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration has provisionally approved the Pfizer vaccine for 2.3 million children aged between five and 11 years of age and the vaccine will be available to children from January 10, 2022 subject to final considerations from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.

Associate Professor and paediatrician Margie Danchin is a vaccine researcher with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and answers your questions.

A child in Canada receives the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. Picture: Andrej Ivanov / AFP

Q. Children rarely get sick with Covid, why do they need to be vaccinated?

“It’s about 1 per cent of those who test positive, but 1 per cent of 2.3 million, of course not all will be infected, but it’s still a substantial proportion of children.

Q. What is the argument for vaccination in kids?

A. First is to directly protect them so they don’t get sick, severe disease does still occur, especially in children with underlying medical conditions. Second is reducing transmission in both households and schools so kids can attend school safely, and third is they can attend school and have less disruption to their education.

Q. We know the vaccine does not 100 per cent stop transmission but it does reduce it?

A. It definitely reduced transmission, we believe it will reduce transmissions in school.

Q. Will the virus seek out the unvaccinated cohort, in this case, kids under 12?

A. Yes, that is right and we don’t know what Omicron will do, if it will be more transmissible so we just want to reduce kids getting infected in the first place and passing it on.

Q. What is the safety profile?

A. The common and expected side effects don’t occur more commonly than they do in teenagers and younger adults. The most common is a sore arm, followed by headache and fatigue.

Q. What about the rare side effects of myocarditis (inflammation of heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the outer lining of the heart) which we have seen in teenage boys?

A. There’s now been 1.4 million kids vaccinated in the US with dose 2 and there has not been a vaccine safety signal, what we mean by that is there are not increased reports of either myocarditis or pericarditis above what is expected in the background (unvaccinated) rate in the community for other viruses and causes.

Q. What is the dose?

A. It’s a third of the adult or teen dose and comes in an orange topped vial where the adult comes in a purple top vial, so it is important the paediatric orange top vial is used to get a correct dose.