Detroit officials to outline plan for providing COVID-19 vaccines to young kids

The Mayor of Detroit will outline the city’s plan to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to children

Along with the director of Detroit public schools and the chief public health officer, Mayor Mike Duggan will announce details of the city’s plan to provide the child-friendly dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Friday.

Mayor Mike Duggan, along with city and school officials, will outline Detroit’s plan to provide COVID-19 vaccines to children on Friday.

At 10 a.m., Duggan is met by the Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools, Dr. Nikolai Vitti, and Denise Fair, Chief Public Health Officer, escorted to outline measures to deliver the child-sized dose recently approved by federal agencies. FOX 2 will stream the press conference live on FOX2Detroit.com and on YouTube.

Until recently, children aged 5 to 11 were among the last groups in the US to not have an option to protect against the virus that did not include preventative measures like masks and social distancing.

That changed this week when bodies from the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave their clear approval for the vaccine.

Vaccination for children is about a third of the dose used for adult vaccines, as children do not need the same strength of vaccine to get the same level of protection. It will also reduce the severity of the side effects that are typical of taking the vaccine.

There are 825,000 children in Michigan who are now eligible for the injection. Another vaccination of this group will make schools and day-care centers safer from infection for both children and staff.

Meijer also takes appointments to give syringes. Walgreens will administer them on Saturday and CVS on Sunday. Michigan Medicine will begin Monday and Beaumont will begin offering shots sometime next week.

Those who have already received the COVID-19 vaccine probably know the side effects after the first and second injections:

The arm that the syringe was given becomes sore, and there may be swelling and redness at the injection site. The rest of the body can experience bouts of tiredness and exhaustion, headaches, muscle aches, chills, and fever. These are normal. It is extremely rare for a side effect to become more serious.

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But is that also the case with children? If children ages 5-11 are now eligible for their own COVID-19 vaccine, what can they expect after receiving their vaccination?

The short answer is about the same as other people who get the shot.

Even at a lower dose, the side effects are roughly the same: pain in the arm where a child was injected, headache, muscle aches, fever and chills all over the body. These are normal and a sign that the body is responding to the vaccine by building immunity to COVID-19.

Some children have no side effects at all.

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There are some key differences between the version that is now being offered to children and the one that has been given to teenagers and adults. Most notable is the dosage, which is one-third the strength of the adult version. It should be a two-shot regiment three weeks apart.

The shot that adults get is 30 micrograms of RNA while the shot for children is only 10 micrograms. It is possible that one day even younger children will receive the same vaccine at an even lower dose.

According to Pfizer, the lower dose was chosen to minimize the side effects of the syringe while still providing strong immunity.

“If you’re using antibiotics or other chemotherapy, those doses depend on weight factors,” said Dr. Bishara Freij, the Head of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Beaumont. “Vaccine reactions happen when the immune system recognizes what has been injected. It processes the product and then starts making antibodies that are independent of the vaccination.”

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