Some experts even suggest that the pandemic may not end without a child vaccine campaign: Vaccinating children will help slow the spread of the disease to the unvaccinated and to more at-risk adults, reducing its toll on everyone.

There is simply not an acceptable number of child deaths when such effective and safe preventive treatments are available. So, for the same reason pediatricians recommend seatbelts and car seats, we are recommending vaccines for Covid-19.

Parents should feel assured that when the vaccines are authorized for children, it means they are considered extremely effective and side effects are rare. The question I am most often asked is about the risk of myocarditis after the vaccine. Myocarditis is an inflammation of the muscle of the heart which can occur from many different causes and can range in severity. It occurs very rarely after getting an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine (like the ones made by Moderna and Pfizer) and is more common after the second shot and in young men.

When I chose to vaccinate my teenage son, there were two things that were important to my decision-making. First, the risk of developing myocarditis after a Covid-19 infection is much higher than the risk of developing myocarditis after the vaccine. Second, almost all the cases of myocarditis after the vaccine are mild, and people generally get better quickly. Vaccinating my children was an easy choice knowing that the risk of Covid-19 to children is far greater than the risk of the vaccines.