GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Saturday it’s giving its approval for children under the age of five to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
The advisory panel unanimously signed off on the decision, not long after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did the same.
READ MORE: CDC clears way for COVID-19 shots for children under 5 to begin
KC Laskey lives in West Michigan and says this announcement is welcome news for her family.
“We will be near the first in line to access these vaccines,” Laskey told FOX 17.
Laskey says her two-year-old and four-year-old both are showing asthmatic signs.
She feared what could happen to them if they got COVID-19, so she made them part of Pfizer’s trial.
Laskey told FOX 17 she’s not sure if her children got the true vaccine or a placebo, but her family will know the results of the study on Monday.
In the meantime, she’s already making calls to figure out where her children can get vaccinated, in case either of them did get the placebo.
“We would prefer for him to start school fully protected,” she added.
The CDC’s approval is for both Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines for children between six months and five years old.
“Now, an important thing to know about the Moderna vaccine, it’s less pokes, but the vaccine efficacy data that they were able to give to the FDA showed that it didn’t have quite as high the vaccine efficacy against infection. It was 40% to 50% protection against even mild infections,” said Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist, Dr. Rosey Olivero.
Much of Western Michigan shows that the spread of COVID-19 is relatively low, but, according to the state’s dashboard, Kalamazoo and St. Joseph counties have slightly higher numbers.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is still among us. It’s, we the experts in the field do believe that COVID-19 will be with us as a virus that we encounter through waves every year,” said Dr. Olivero.
