What's the Latest on COVID-19 Vaccines for Teens?

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What's the Latest on Vaccines for Teens?

It's been a little more than a month since adolescents as young as 12 became eligible in the United States to receive the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19, and nearly all reports have been positive: The vaccine is very effective in this age group, and the vast majority of kids experience mild side effects, if any — the same sore arm or mild flulike symptoms seen among adults who get the shot.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that everyone 12 and older get vaccinated against COVID-19, and the rollout is well underway: According to the CDC last week, around 7 million U.S. teens and preteens (ages 12 through 17) had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine so far.

Still, soon after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the use of Pfizer's vaccine in young people, federal agencies began receiving reports of mild chest pain or other signs of possible heart inflammation (known as myocarditis) in a small percentage of teens and young adults soon after vaccination.

Several hundred reports about the inflammation have been filed with the federal government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS; that's a repository of reports sent in by health professionals and patients about any health events they spot in the hours or days after vaccinations. Many of the events reported turn out to be coincidental — not caused by a vaccine. The database is just meant as a starting point for further investigation and not proof of cause and effect. But as NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has reported, "when millions of people are vaccinated within a short period, the total number of these reported events can look big."

That said, anecdotes reported by doctors in medical journals and reports to VAERS suggest that both of the mRNA vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. — the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — might slightly increase the incidence of myocarditis in young people. In 2003, a report in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated the background incidence of myocarditis to be 1.13 cases in 100,000 children per year.

Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of an FDA vaccine advisory committee, says there likely is a causal link between the heart inflammation some doctors are seeing in these teens and the second dose of vaccine. "I think it's real," he says, but he hastens to add that the effect is exceedingly small — based on the data collected so far, maybe one in 50,000 vaccinees between the ages of 16 and 39. "And the good news is at least so far it looks to be transient and self-resolving."

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