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 of COVID-19 vaccines, but the vast majority of those jabs are going to adults. Moderna announced last week that it has 

 children from 6 months to less than 12 years old into a trial of its COVID-19 vaccine. 

Having the young vaccinated would bring the country "another step closer to actually achieving herd immunity and protecting everybody," says Dr. Steve Plimpton, an OB-GYN in Arizona who is the principal investigator for the Moderna children's trial in Phoenix.

Pfizer's vaccine currently is authorized for people as young as 16

 on 12- to 15-years-olds. The vaccines from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson currently are for people 18 and up.

In an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, Plimpton says parents have been eager to sign up their children for the Moderna trials, which will include 6,750 children in the U.S. and Canada.

"The response from the parents has been overwhelming," he says. "They're calling literally all day long, asking for when they can get their kids vaccinated."

Parents are "looking for protection for their kids. Especially here in Arizona, the kids 

 by governor mandate. And now we're going to have more exposure issues for these kids," Plimpton says. "But indirectly, they're also going to be protecting themselves and those around the kids that might be infected if the kids actually get infected."

He adds that if more children are vaccinated, "we're going to head more towards a community immunity and then obviously on to herd immunity by taking this population out of the potential transmission of COVID-19."

The study is scheduled to last about 14 months, but Plimpton says he doesn't expect it to take that long.

"We already have 300 parents here in Phoenix that want to get their children injected. So to achieve the 6,750 patients we want for statistical significance in order to get the data to go to the FDA, it'll probably be less than that amount of time," he said.

So, if young children can be vaccinated, will it mean a return to playdates?

"We're all starved for any social interaction for our kids, if not for ourselves. So this is a step getting back to our normal life," Plimpton says. 

Health

COVID-19

A Martinez

Author

Moderna has begun testing its vaccine on children as young as 6 months old. A principal investigator in the trial says getting children vaccinated would be "a step getting back to our normal life." 

Vaccinating children seen as a key step toward COVID-19 herd immunity

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