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When will it be safe for our children and families to get Conronvirus vaccines?
There are currently no licensed vaccines for COVID, but the Íøºì±¬ÁÏ School of Medicine is working with scientific partners to evaluate a few lead candidate vaccines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the government organization that licenses all drugs and vaccines in the U.S. They recently published a guideline that clearly states what is needed for a COVID vaccine to be licensed. Among the important factors are that the vaccines needs to be both safe and effective; the efficacy needs to be seen in children, young adults, and older adults and should be evaluated in all races, ethnicities, and in special populations (such as pregnant women, immunocompromised, etc.).
Once the FDA has licensed a COVID vaccine, then the vaccine can be administered to the general population. So, by this time it should be safe for everyone to have their children get vaccinated. After vaccination, we hope to see a very significant decline in COVID activity. Meanwhile, it will be important to continue to wears masks and maintain physical distance; avoid large crowds and close interactions with a large number of people. When the COVID cases have dropped off and there is much less circulation and transmission of COVID infections in the population, then it will be very safe to re-open schools back to normal operations.
