Healthy North

You can now register your child under five for COVID-19 vaccination

Registration for COVID-19 vaccination for BC children aged six months to four years is now open. Below, read why doctors at BC Children’s Hospital recommend the vaccine.

Call or go online to register

The COVID-19 vaccine for children aged six months to four years will be available at child-friendly clinics in communities. Register children in the provincial Get Vaccinated system (getvaccinated.gov.bc.ca) now by going online or calling 1-833-838-2323 (7 am to 7 pm daily; translators are available).

Once registration is complete, parents or guardians will be invited to book a vaccination at a clinic in their community when the immunization program starts in August. For children who are not yet six months old, parents or guardians should still register their child and can expect an invitation once the child reaches that age.

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommends two doses with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, with eight weeks between doses. This Moderna vaccine is a smaller dose of the same Moderna vaccine that’s used for older children. You can read more here: canada.ca/en/publichealth/services/immunization/national-advisory-committee-on-immunization-naci.html

Doctors recommend vaccination

“Vaccination is one of the most effective ways to protect our families, communities and ourselves against COVID-19,” says Dr. Laura Sauvé, a BC Children’s Hospital infectious disease pediatrician who has been caring for children with complex infections for 16 years.

She led the group that created the COVID-19 pediatric treatment guidelines in BC, and has read extensive amounts of data about children, COVID-19, and vaccines.

“Evidence indicates that the vaccines used in Canada are very effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19. Based on Health Canada’s review of the safety, efficacy, and quality of the vaccine, Health Canada determined the benefits of the vaccine in this age group outweigh any risks,” says Dr. Sauvé.

Children and COVID-19

“Severe outcomes of COVID-19 in young children are unusual, but they do happen,” says Dr. Sauvé. “There’s increased risk from some underlying medical conditions, but some children who were otherwise previously healthy have also had severe COVID-19.” Having your child or youth vaccinated also means they are less likely to get severe COVID-19 or its complications.

Even if your young child has already had COVID-19 and recovered, they should still get vaccinated. Not

everyone develops a strong immune response after having COVID-19.

Vaccine safety testing

All COVID-19 vaccines for adults and children follow the same review and approval process in Canada.

The Moderna clinical trial showed that the vaccine was well tolerated, and no serious adverse reactions were identified. There were no deaths, no cases of MIS-C (a rare complication of COVID-19), and no cases of myocarditis and/or pericarditis reported among the nearly 5,000 trial participants. As usual, surveillance for adverse events will continue even after the vaccine has been licensed.

The trial also showed that the immune response to the vaccine in children six months to five years of age was comparable to that seen in people 18 to 25 years of age. This was assessed when Omicron was the main type of COVID-19 circulating in the US and Canada, so it is effective for that strain. The ingredients of the Moderna vaccine have been researched for more than 20 years. COVID-19 vaccination has no impact on future fertility. There is no biological way for this to occur.

Resources

For more information, including third-dose criteria for young children who are moderately to severely immunocompromised, please see the BC Government web page on young children and COVID-19: www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/covid-19/vaccine/young-children

For information about COVID-19 vaccination for other age groups, visit the BC Government website: www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/covid-19/vaccine

A version of this story originally appeared on the BC Children’s Hospital website (bcchildrens.ca/ about/news-stories/stories/register-your-child-under-5-for-covid19-vaccination). It has been shared

with permission.