Pediatrician Rhea Boyd, MD, MPH explains why parents can have confidence that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe for their eligible children.
So, yes, it is safe, but a lot of parents ask me, “How do we know it safe?” So, there’s a couple of ways. The first way we know it’s safe is the rigorous clinical trial process that kids went through for us to know it’s safe in kids 5-11. Which told us that, while there’s common mild side effects, there were no actually rare side effects, which was really reassuring during that clinical trial process. And then, on top of that, we also have nearly 200 million Americans who have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine. So now we know that even serious side effects are exceedingly rare, which is incredibly reassuring as we all prepare to give the vaccines to our kids.