--- title: Which COVID-19 Vaccine Should Your Kid Under 5 Get? description: There are some key differences between the two under-5 vaccines. Here's how doctors are thinking about it for their own children. canonical: https://time.com/6190753/covid-19-vaccine-kids-pfizer-or-moderna/ author: Melody Schreiber article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-06-28T15:00:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:36:49.936Z article:section: Health og:title: Which COVID-19 Vaccine Should Your Young Kid Get? That Depends, Doctors Say og:description: Doctors explain how they're making the choice for their own kids og:url: https://time.com/6190753/covid-19-vaccine-kids-pfizer-or-moderna/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3a841a98540dcfc5/698a333886f68e3e2f6f15cf/covid-19-vaccine-kids-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: covid-19-vaccine-kids og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Which COVID-19 Vaccine Should Your Young Kid Get? That Depends, Doctors Say twitter:description: Doctors explain how they're making the choice for their own kids twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3a841a98540dcfc5/698a333886f68e3e2f6f15cf/covid-19-vaccine-kids-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Which COVID-19 Vaccine Should Your Young Kid Get? That Depends, Doctors Say > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=518b4311-b9a2-4f81-9a4c-ad9e2442213b&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine [Watch (HLS stream): The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BTNvQC2o.m3u8) (5:16)  _Published 2021-12-13. For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts._ by [Melody Schreiber](https://time.com/author/melody-schreiber/) ## Melody Schreiber Jun 28, 2022 3:00 PM UTC by [Melody Schreiber](https://time.com/author/melody-schreiber/) ## Melody Schreiber Jun 28, 2022 3:00 PM UTC COVID-19 vaccines for some of the youngest children in the U.S. are now rolling out, and parents are faced with a new question: Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech? Both of the mRNA shots—which are [now authorized](https://time.com/6187674/covid-19-vaccines-kids-under-five-fda/) for kids ages 6 months and up—are effective at preventing severe illness, and they both help prevent symptomatic infections. They offer vital protection in this age group, even for kids who have already recovered from COVID-19\. The vaccines “provide protection against a broader variety of variants than \[a previous\] infection, which generally provides protection mostly against the variant that you had,” says Dr. Alissa Kahn, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist in Paterson, N.J. That’s particularly important as the virus evolves to overcome prior immunity. Each time an unvaccinated child is exposed to SARS-CoV-2, “you’re sort of rolling the dice—and most kids will do well, but sometimes they don’t.” Since the start of the pandemic, [more than 440 children](https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3) under 5 in the U.S. have died. But unlike with the adult shots—where the best shot was the one you could get quickly—there are some [key differences between the two under-5 vaccines](https://time.com/6189036/covid-19-vaccines-kids/). “The science behind how they work is the same,” says Dr. Mona Amin, a pediatrician in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “The difference is the schedule and the dose.” Moderna’s vaccine for kids ages 6 months through 5 years is 25 micrograms (mcg)—one-quarter of the dose that adults get. Pfizer’s shot for kids 6 months through 4 years is 3 mcg—one-tenth the adult dose. Likely because of the higher dose, mild side effects (such as a fever) are more common with the Moderna shot, according to [trial](https://www.fda.gov/media/159189/download) [data](https://www.fda.gov/media/159195/download). The timeline for vaccination is also different. Moderna’s vaccine involves two shots four weeks apart, while Pfizer’s requires three shots over 11 weeks. So while Pfizer has a lower dose and possibly fewer side effects, it takes one more shot than Moderna and several more weeks until kids are fully vaccinated. If parents want kids to be protected as soon as possible—a particular concern with most schools starting in a couple of months—they might want to go with Moderna. That’s what Kahn is choosing for her 4-year old son. The faster Moderna timeline “is really going to allow parents to be able to send their kids to school in the fall fully vaccinated, which is important for a lot of families,” she says. Moderna is also the “pretty clear” choice for Dr. Alpa P. Shah, a pediatrician in Milwaukee. Her 2-year-old daughter attends preschool at a school with elementary-aged kids, and Shah is worried about increased chances of exposure this fall as more children return to the classroom. “The timeline is much more friendly for the fall with Moderna,” she says. Moderna might also be more appealing for families who prefer two initial shots over three because of transportation issues or time spent away from work. But if parents are concerned about side effects, and they’re not in a particular hurry, Pfizer might be a better option. Having the option for a lower dose with a decreased risk for side effects could also help some families overcome hesitancy about getting vaccinated. The third Pfizer shot also seems to elicit broader antibody responses, which likely help against Omicron. That’s what Amin is choosing for her 2-year-old son. He already had COVID-19 twice, and while that doesn’t offer complete protection against reinfection, it means his existing immune response could be strong even before he gets a third shot. Amin also likes the fact that the Pfizer vaccine has already been given to millions of children ages 5 and up, while Moderna was only available for U.S. adults until June 24, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended its use in kids. That means there are more real-world data on Pfizer’s side effects among older children, including very rare side effects like myocarditis. Dr. Roby Bhattacharyya, an infectious disease doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, went back and forth on which vaccine to schedule for his 4-year-old son. “The data for either one looks great, far above my threshold for where the expected benefits exceed the risks,” he writes in an email. “If only one or the other were available, I’d take either in a heartbeat for my kid.” Ultimately, he decided the most important thing was to get a vaccine quickly. “Our kids are starting camp, and I think the cost of waiting another 10 days where they’re hanging out in close quarters with a bunch of kids at a time when there’s still a decent amount of circulating virus is more risk than any difference I see between these two, both of which I see as good options,” Bhattacharyya writes. A few hours later, his son received the first vaccine they could schedule: Pfizer’s. That’s fairly typical right now; some pediatricians and health systems are only carrying the Pfizer shot, at least at first, because they already have a system set up for giving Pfizer to older kids. As of mid-June, providers had [ordered](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/18/prewrite-cdc-advisers-recommend-pfizer-moderna-covid-19-vaccine-for-babies-and-toddlers-00040630) 2.5 million doses of Pfizer and 1.3 million doses of Moderna. But if you only have access to one type of vaccine, even if it’s not your preference, you shouldn’t feel like you’re getting an inferior vaccine, the experts agreed. And, more generally, the under-5 vaccines are not available in as many places as vaccines for other ages, which were often administered at mass vaccination sites or schools. Instead, most families are going to their pediatrician or general practitioner, pharmacies (which by [law](https://naspa.us/resource/federal-prep-act-actions/) can only give COVID-19 vaccines to kids ages 3 and up), state or local health departments, and federally qualified health centers. (If you’re looking to set up an appointment, you can search by vaccine type at [vaccines.gov](http://vaccines.gov/).) “I would just love to see both vaccines available in all states and distributed in an equitable fashion,” Shah says, “so families can really choose what makes sense to them.” ## Transcript Kind: captions Language: en I think vaccines are misunderstood, and maybe it's because it seems like magic. That simplicity and the mystery of it is something that ends up creating a lot of skepticism. People are fooled by the speed. Everything that we knew when it was time to design a vaccine for COVID-19, we knew for so long, but the public had just become aware of it. If this would happen two years ago, we would not be ready. Saying that it happened overnight, it took two, three decades, at least. 2021 was the year when so many praised the miracle of vaccine development. In science, there is hardly ever a simple, quick fix. But this was truly a moment of the right fix - a brand new kind of vaccine technology - at exactly the right time. I started out in math, and I moved to biology. And after medical school, I saw one of the first cases of HIV in Tennessee back in 1982. And so the first part of my career was trying to understand the immunology of vaccine-enhanced disease and trying to make vaccines safer. I got interested in science when I was 16 years old. I was hooked on the idea that you could go to work and discover something that no one else in the world knows on any given day. It seems at 16, I thought that maybe I will be a scientist. I was always working with mRNA, I mean for 30 years at least. And I never wanted to develop a vaccine. I wanted to develop it for therapy. When I first came to Penn from the NIH, pure luck hit where I met Kati Karikó over a Xerox machine. And she told me she worked on RNA, and she could help us with our vaccine. Every experiment doesn't work, every hypothesis isn't good. It was a continuous flow of negative feedback. But we saw the potential of the RNA and neither of us would give up. Although mRNA can teach our cells to fight infection, it took doctors Karikó and Weissman 16 years to figure out how to use it safely in a vaccine. First when I made this RNA, actually I did not tell Drew Weissman, my colleague, because I thought that maybe I mixed up something. So I repeated the experiment and we could see that there was no inflammation in human cells. We're both scientists. We're not baseball players who cheer when we hit a homerun. We knew that it had great potential. But what we thought about is what are we going to do with it? Meanwhile, doctors Corbett and Graham spent years unlocking the structural secrets of viruses. One of the really important problems in coronaviruses that had not been solved is really simple. What does the coronavirus really look like to the immune system? And to figure that out, you have to be able to take a really high definition picture of the proteins that are on the surface of the coronavirus. And then do some protein engineering to stabilize the structure. At that moment, you realize that you have almost what is a universal strategy for creating a vaccine for coronaviruses. A mysterious respiratory illness with similarities to SARS has healthcare workers around the world on alert. What we said to each other, all's we need is a sequence and we're ready to go. We can make a vaccine in weeks and get it into people very quickly. The fact that we made a vaccine in 10 months, and has the potential to end this pandemic, will certainly stand out. "Do it mama!" (laughter) Most scientists never get to see a product actually used. And to watch the evening news and see the relief on healthcare providers getting immunized, those were special moments. I also get emotional when I got a letter from an elderly home, and they reported that they received the vaccine. There were like 200 elderly in that home. And nobody died. On social media, when children were going back to visiting their grandparents again. Seeing people reunited in that way, it was a very surreal moment. A surreal moment, and definitely worth celebrating, if only briefly before a return to work. These scientists are now trying to apply their game-changing discoveries to other diseases. Influenza, even cancer. 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