‘Tis the holiday season! For many, that means traveling and gathering with friends and family. That also means more opportunities to catch COVID.
Thankfully, updated COVID vaccines are available for people 6 months and older. The updated COVID vaccines are designed to help protect against Omicron, the variant that is causing all new COVID infections in the United States.
Staying up to date with your COVID vaccine, including getting your updated COVID vaccine as soon as you can, is your best protection from severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID.
Go ahead. Give yourself and others the gift of protection and peace of mind as you get together for the holidays.
When to Get your Updated COVID Vaccine
When to get your updated COVID vaccine depends on your age, how many vaccine doses you’ve already gotten, and when you got them:
- Get your updated COVID vaccine now if you’re 12 or older, vaccinated, and your last dose was before September 2022.
- Children 6 months – 11 years can get their updated COVID vaccine now if their last dose was before October 2022.
- Otherwise, wait until 2 months after completing a primary vaccination series to get an updated vaccine dose. For most people, completing a primary vaccination series means you got 2 shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Novavax vaccine, or 1 shot of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine.
- If you recently had COVID, you should wait 3 months from when you got sick to get your updated vaccine.
- Children 6 months – 4 years who have gotten all three Pfizer-BioNTech primary series vaccine doses don’t need an updated vaccine at this time.
COVID Has Been Dangerous for Children
Since the pandemic began, over 170,000 children under age 18 have been hospitalized and more than 1,900 have died from COVID.
Also, as many as 1 in 4 children who get COVID experience long COVID, in which they have new or lingering symptoms that last for weeks or months after infection.
Many kids are also getting multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, a rare but serious illness caused by COVID that involves painful swelling in different parts of the body, including the heart, lungs, and brain. Over 9,000 children with COVID have also had MIS-C; 74 of those children have died.
COVID can also increase children’s risk for diabetes. A study found that children who’ve had COVID are more than twice as likely than children who haven’t had COVID to be diagnosed with diabetes a month or more after infection.
Where to Find COVID Vaccines for Children
COVID vaccines for kids are available at pediatricians’ and other doctors’ offices, community health centers, rural health clinics, children’s hospitals, public health clinics, local pharmacies, and other community-based organizations.
To find free COVID vaccines for your child, talk to your child’s pediatrician or your family doctor. You can also find vaccines for children near you at vaccines.gov.
