Aug 23 (Japan Times) - When a 13-year-old girl in Aichi Prefecture received a vaccination voucher mailed to her home at the end of July, her father wasn’t sure if she should be inoculated.
“Would it be all right for a child still going through puberty to be vaccinated? To be honest, I was worried,” he said.
The father looked into the possible side effects on the health ministry’s website and explained what he’d read to her.
But she had already made up her mind. “I want to get it,” she said, adding that she didn’t want to miss school by getting the virus.
She received both vaccinations in July. Her arm was sore after the first dose and she ran a fever of 38 degrees Celsius after the second jab, which went away after a few days.
The health ministry lowered the age of eligibility to 12 for COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna.
While the infection is spreading again in many areas, children are said be more likely to suffer from side effects of the vaccine than adults. With this in mind, many parents are wondering what they should do.
What do parents need to know when deciding whether or not to vaccinate their kids?
It’s important to know that in general, younger people who are infected with COVID-19 are less likely to experience severe symptoms. For example, as of Aug. 4, one out of every seven people in their 80s or older has died from the disease, while just one out of every 25,000 people in their 20s suffered a similar fate. There have been no cases in Japan of someone in their teens or younger dying of COVID-19.
Considering these figures and the fact that COVID-19 vaccines are meant to prevent people from developing symptoms or becoming severely ill, the benefits of vaccination for children could be limited.
