Montana doctor addresses concerns with COVID-19 vaccine for kids

BILLINGS — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended28 million five to 11-year-olds take the COVID-19 vaccine.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey taken before the emergency use authorization shows about 27% would have their children vaccinated.

That survey also shows other parents are very or somewhat concerned with long-term effects of the vaccine (76%) and about serious side effects (71%).

"It's good to go through those things with your family doctor or with your pediatrician to understand," said Riverstone Montana Family Medicine Residency program director Dr. Garth Brand. "Unfortunately, this is a new vaccine. And so we're learning about it and we're not necessarily going to know what a lot of those things are."

Dr. Garth Brand, Riverstone Health.

Brand says he recommends children get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Another parental concern in the survey is that 66% are concerned or somewhat concerned about their child's fertility in the future.

"People have been concerned about infertility and there was a lot of worry about pregnant moms about whether they should get it or not," Brand said. "That has not been borne out and that is not based on you know, data that has shown that any there's any linkages there."

Many have made entries on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration manage VAERS and state on the website, "VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem, but is especially useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that might indicate a possible safety problem with a vaccine."

"There's a lot of confusion about how those adverse events are reported," Brand said. "The CDC is going through and doing their due diligence and making sure that we're tracking the adverse events that we're seeing actively. There are definitely some adverse events, but in general, the vast majority of people do really well with the vaccine. They tolerate it well, and they're going to be protected afterward, which is really important."