Opinion: While children wait for their COVID jab, caution is still required
is good news. Those in the vaccine group had a good immune response and the expected mild side effects were not more common than in older teenagers or young adults, and no serious adverse events were detected. Having said that, the trial was too small to detect any rare but serious side effects should they exist.
None of this should cause alarm for parents. It is well documented, and widely agreed, that severe acute consequences of COVID-19 are rare. There is no reason to panic about the prospect of your child getting COVID-19. But the risks of severe illness in children are not non-existent, especially for some children with underlying medical or chronic conditions, who may be at higher risk.
As we open up and try hard to keep children in face-to-face learning and to attend social and sporting activities more generally, preventing infection in children presents many challenges.