According to Bloomberg, over 400 million vaccine shots for COVID-19 were given across the planet. Over 110 million jabs were administered in the US, meaning almost a third of the country’s population. The vast majority of the vaccines were given to adults, but the future could bring us some surprises.
NPR.org writes that Moderna announced that it had begun a trial of the COVID-19 vaccine in which it will involve children from ages of 6 months old and until 12 years old.
Another step closer to protecting everybody?
Dr. Steve Plimpton, who’s an OB-GYN and the principal investigator in Phoenix for Moderna’s children trial, is a firm upholder of the idea of vaccinating the little ones. He declared that such an initiative would bring the country “another step closer to actually achieving herd immunity and protecting everybody.”
Plimpton also declared for Morning Edition that parents manifested their desire to sign up their kids for the Moderna trials that will include 6,750 children from the US and Canada. The doctor also said:
The response from the parents has been overwhelming,
They’re calling literally all day long, asking for when they can get their kids vaccinated.
Business Insider writes that the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is about to hit Europe, and countries like Germany and Italy have already imposed new lockdown measures.
Lothar Wieler, an infectious disease expert, said that the third COVID wave had already begun in Germany. According to data from worldometers.info, the European country reported a total of over 2.6 million COVID infections and more than 74,000 deaths caused by the disease. Germany reported over 16,000 infections over a span of 24 hours on Wednesday, March 17. The number is extremely worrying, considering that Germany didn’t report so many infections since January.
