13. Protecting Our Children

Vaccination in children has fueled a global expert debate specifically around the risk benefit consideration that some may find acceptable and others may find questionable. While children were largely protected from the virus early on in the pandemic, we've come to a point where children are getting sick, some of them severely ill and dying. Experts discuss the changing risks of Covid in kids and how the benefits of vaccination in kids measure up versus potential adverse events. We first look at inactivated vaccines, which are now the most used vaccines in children (as young as 2 years of age) and we take a special deep dive into Chile's rationale for its large scale vaccination drive to get kids back into school. mRNA vaccines are also starting to get rolled out with Pfizer just receiving a US authorization in kids aged 5-11, and experts discuss the risk benefits and greater unknowns of this new technology, particularly around the nuance of dosing, Experts discuss the overall rationale for vaccination when looking at efficacy, safety and potential mechanistic concerns. Vaccinating kids and its overall impact on this pandemic remains debated, although perhaps not in Africa, where children may be the most at need of vaccination to reach global herd immunity, yet stand to be at the end of the queue. Meanwhile, as the issue around pregnancy continues to generate vaccine hesitancy, experts discuss new available data that speaks to the the risk/benefit profile in pregnant women and women wanting to conceive.

Expert Guests

-- Dr Miguel O'Ryan is Professor of Microbiology and Mycology, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Chile, where he is also Director of International Affairs. His research focuses on molecular and clinical aspects of enteric disease, pediatric vaccines and infection of the immunocompromised host.

-- Dr. Nadia Sam-Agudu is Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Immunology/Infectious Diseases) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Senior Technical Advisor at the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria. She conducts public health and implementation research in maternal and child health, with a focus on HIV and other major infectious diseases in African countries. -- Dr Nikolai Petrovsky is Professor of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia and vice-president and secretary-general of the International Immunomics Society. He is the founder of vaccine biotech, Vaxine, which has a protein based vaccine for Covid-19 in its pipeline.

-- Dr Maria Elena Bottazzi is the Associate Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics (Tropical Medicine) and Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, US. She is a leading expert in the field of vaccine development and tropical diseases.

-- Dr Deborah Fuller is a Professor of Microbiology at The University of Washington School of Medicine. A veteran vaccinologist and researcher, she has been working on vaccine development for the last 30 years with specific research around DNA and RNA technologies.