Medic administers COVID-19 vaccine to EIGHT-YEAR-OLD boy after his father booked an appointment online without realizing children aren't eligible
A medic gave an eight-year-old boy a COVID-19 vaccine in Texas last month in what officials have called an 'oversight' due to 'human error.'
The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are only approved for those aged 18 and older and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those aged 16 and older.
But a father said he registered his elementary school-aged son for an appointment at a drive-thru site in Dallas County site run by first responders in Grand Prairie, where a paramedic injected the child, reported NBC DFW.
The father assumed that because he had received a QR code confirming the appointment that the child was eligible to get vaccinated.
He did not know until he spoke to a pediatrician after the fact that children are not eligible to receive coronavirus vaccines.
Currently, several coronavirus vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca are running clinical trials on children, some as young as six months old.
The father of an 8-year-old boy in Dallas County, Texas, registered his son online to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and took him to a drive-thru site last month, where a paramedic administered the shot (file image)
Dallas County officials say they are looking into why the registration website did not have a fail safe to prevent underage kids from being administered shots. Pictured: People at the Dallas County mass vaccination site at Fair Park in Dallas, January 2021
'He was under the assumption that: "I submit his information and he got an appointment,"' pediatrician Dr Marcial Oquendo told NBC DFW.
'And when he got an appointment, he was like: "We all got an appointment so let's go."'
Oquendo said that the boy's father did not realize children are not eligible to receive vaccines until the the two had a conversation after the appointment.
Chief Robert Fite of the Grand Prairie Fire Department told NBC DFW that on the day the boy got the vaccine, about 3,800 people passed through the vaccination site.
He said he is currently gathering information about how this 'oversight' occurred and is working to find the paramedic that administered the vaccine.
'They're in the car, there's a code, the paramedic did what that paramedic did for thousands of others for that day and went ahead and gave the vaccination, and did not realize it was a child under the age of 18,' Fite said.
Officials say there was no fail safe system in place when the boy's father registered him through the Dallas County website.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said that when the boy's father initially registered him, the child was put on a waitlist.
But when Texas lowered the age of eligibility from age 50 and older to age 16 and older, the website moved everyone on the waitlist over to the eligible list.
'There was human error, and...they failed to scrub for people who were under 18,' Jenkins told NBC DFW.
Jenkins said that the county is working with the IT Department to prevent children from being registered in the future and medics have been spoken to in case they spot anybody who looks too young to be getting vaccinated.
Currently, several vaccine manufacturers are running clinical trials to test their coronavirus shots in children.
On Wednesday, Pfizer announced results from its COVID-19 vaccine trial that found it was safe and 100 percent effective at preventing teenagers between ages 12 and 15 from contracting the disease.
Last week, the company and its partner, BioNTech, launched a global COVID-19 trial testing children from ages six months to 11.
Moderna is running a study looking at its vaccine in children aged six months to less than 12 years old and another from 12 years old to age 17.
Results from the trial of older children are expected in late spring or early summer.
Last month, AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford began a study of their vaccine among six- to 17-year-olds in the UK.
It was only after speaking to pediatrician Dr Marcial Oquendo (pictured) that the father understood he had made a mistake
Children are often the last group to be tested during clinical trials because they are not merely little adults.
Their bodies and immune systems behave differently, meaning they might have different treatment needs.
What's more, children may need different doses or needle sizes depending on their height, weight and age - which is why most children are only vaccinated after safety has been well-documented in the adult population.
'We don't have the data, especially under the age of 12 to say if it works, is it safe, how much should we use, which kid can get it and which kids can't,' Oquendo told NBC DFW.
'It needs to be in a controlled setting of a clinical trial where we are monitoring every possible angle to be able to say if it's safe and effective to use in kids in this age group.'
