UCSB to Offer COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic for Children

By Harrison Tasoff, UC Santa Barbara

As a service to its own families and to the broader community beyond the campus, UC Santa Barbara’s Early Childhood Care and Education Services will host a free COVID-19 vaccine clinic for all children 6 months to 11 years old. The event is open to the public, and no ID or insurance is required.

The university is partnering with the California Department of Public Health to provide the free Moderna vaccines. The entire effort is supported by the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department.

The clinic will take place at the Orfalea Family Children’s Center, 900 West Campus Lane. The first dose will be administered July 27 between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.; second doses will be given August 24 between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Registering online in advance at myturn.gov is recommended to minimize wait time, but walk-ins will also be accepted.

“Millions of parents — including our parents at the UCSB Children’s Centers with children under 5 years of age— have been waiting anxiously for the COVID-19 vaccines to be available for young children,” said Annette Suding Muse, director of Early Childhood Care and Education. “We are pleased to be able to partner with the California Department of Public Health to host the vaccine event for children throughout the community. The vaccine is free, safe and effective.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently expanded the authorization of the COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans over the age of 6 months. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all individuals aged 6 months to 5 years old get the COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccination will decrease a child’s chances of severe infection, hospitalization and long COVID, just as it does for adults.

The vaccines are the culmination of decades of research that finally came to fruition with the extra funding provided in response to the pandemic. They work by priming the body to recognize and deal with the new virus SARS-CoV-2, to which no one had any immunity. In this way, they have prevented an untold number of people from developing severe cases of COVID-19.

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9 Comments

  1. That’s pretty amazing that 792,000 out of 2.2 million kids under 5 in California have been vaccinated seeing that the vaccine for that age group was only made available one month ago. Republican parents are too worried about transgender sports and books about two moms to care about their kids health.

    • https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2116298
      BACKGROUND
      Safe, effective vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) are urgently needed in children younger than 12 years of age.
      METHODS
      A phase 1, dose-finding study and an ongoing phase 2–3 randomized trial are being conducted to investigate the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of two doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine administered 21 days apart in children 6 months to 11 years of age. We present results for 5-to-11-year-old children. In the phase 2–3 trial, participants were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to receive two doses of either the BNT162b2 vaccine at the dose level identified during the open-label phase 1 study or placebo. Immune responses 1 month after the second dose of BNT162b2 were immunologically bridged to those in 16-to-25-year-olds from the pivotal trial of two 30-μg doses of BNT162b2. Vaccine efficacy against Covid-19 at 7 days or more after the second dose was assessed.
      RESULTS
      During the phase 1 study, a total of 48 children 5 to 11 years of age received 10 μg, 20 μg, or 30 μg of the BNT162b2 vaccine (16 children at each dose level). On the basis of reactogenicity and immunogenicity, a dose level of 10 μg was selected for further study. In the phase 2–3 trial, a total of 2268 children were randomly assigned to receive the BNT162b2 vaccine (1517 children) or placebo (751 children). At data cutoff, the median follow-up was 2.3 months. In the 5-to-11-year-olds, as in other age groups, the BNT162b2 vaccine had a favorable safety profile. No vaccine-related serious adverse events were noted. One month after the second dose, the geometric mean ratio of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) neutralizing titers in 5-to-11-year-olds to those in 16-to-25-year-olds was 1.04 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.93 to 1.18), a ratio meeting the prespecified immunogenicity success criterion (lower bound of two-sided 95% CI, >0.67; geometric mean ratio point estimate, ≥0.8). Covid-19 with onset 7 days or more after the second dose was reported in three recipients of the BNT162b2 vaccine and in 16 placebo recipients (vaccine efficacy, 90.7%; 95% CI, 67.7 to 98.3).
      CONCLUSIONS
      A Covid-19 vaccination regimen consisting of two 10-μg doses of BNT162b2 administered 21 days apart was found to be safe, immunogenic, and efficacious in children 5 to 11 years of age. (Funded by BioNTech and Pfizer; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04816643. opens in new tab.)

  2. What if this is true.
    Rapid mutation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was expected and predicted, as vaccinating against any highly mutable virus, such as the coronavirus, pressures the virus to adapt. Omicron initially arose in “fully vaccinated” patients, raising suspicions that the mass vaccination campaign itself was driving the rapid mutation of the virus

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