As the pandemic started to slow down, vaccines have been made to help protect us from COVID 19. Healthcare workers have made sure these vaccines are safe by only giving them to teens and adults so far. They are still working on making sure there are no intense health risks for children five years old and younger in the vaccine. 

Recently around December, the Omicron variant sweeped the nation and cases of COVID 19 began to skyrocket once again. Therefore, CNBC reveals: “Parents are anxiously awaiting the vaccine for younger children as the omicron variant sweeps across the nation, causing an unprecedented wave of infection over the past month.” The more cases there are, the more scared parents of young, unvaccinated children will be. However, it is not easy to do this fast. 

As the Washington Post shows, “The companies in the last few months have been testing a third dose, following disappointing results for the two-shot regimen showing that while the vaccine is safe, two doses did not provide a strong enough immune response in all age groups.” The vaccine for the other age groups is still struggling a bit to do its job. Because of this, it is going to be hard to make sure it is completely safe for young children and infants. 

CNBC explains that there is a very low risk for young children to develop severe sickness from the virus compared to adults. However, the hospitalizations for these infants have risen greatly throughout the pandemic. These hospitalizations have increased infections for them and will start to impact the long term health of these children even more than COVID does itself. 

Regardless, many parents are still looking to vaccinate their young children. According to NPR, if these vaccines can be found safe soon, the vaccine for those five years old and younger will be released in the next few weeks.