Vaccinating children for COVID-19

The AMA calls for calm on vaccinating children against COVID-19 and to wait for release of scientific safety study.

The AMA has called for calm over understandable community concerns for children’s safety and a push for them to be vaccinated for COVID-19.

AMA President Dr Omar Khorshid told ABC Radio National that everyone was rightly concerned about the health and welfare of children during the pandemic, however, decisions to vaccinate would need to be guided by robust studies, scientific evidence and regulatory approvals.

“We are very concerned about children, but at the end of the day….although kids are getting infected with Delta, they are vastly less susceptible to severe illness or hospitalisation or death,” he told host Fran Kelly on Thursday morning.

Dr Khorshid said parents did not need to be terrified about the possibility of children getting COVID-19.

“They (children) are more robust than we are and they are going to get through, more likely than we are,” he said.

Dr Khorshid said there was no licensed vaccine approved for use by children under 12 years anywhere in the world.

“Whilst we would like to be able to vaccinate children … before exposing them to COVID, we simply do not have a safe and effective vaccine that is licensed anywhere. So it’s a little academic,” he said.

Dr Khorshid the AMA was hoping that data on the efficacy and safety of vaccination of young children would be available from the United States by September or October.

“That may mean that we are in a position to actually roll out the vaccine out before the end of the year to children,” he said.