Pediatric COVID-19 vaccine trial lead is available for interviews
Following FDA advisory committee meeting Wednesday, expert can address questions
CHICAGO --- Northwestern University pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Bill Muller can answer reporters’ questions following Wednesday’s U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory committee meeting that will cover whether to grant emergency use authorization to Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for their COVID-19 vaccines for the youngest children.
Muller leads the clinical trial of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for under age 12 at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. While he cannot speak about the specific study design of the Moderna clinical trial, he can address:
- Vaccine dosing in young children
- Vaccine effectiveness, including explaining what the efficacy percentages mean for each vaccine, and how new variants affected the trials
- Why the vaccine review process for the youngest children took much longer than other age groups
- What the process of getting these vaccines to young children will look like
- Questions parents may have, such as why it’s important to get their children vaccinated or concerns they may have about adverse effects of the vaccine
- Safety of all clinical trials, not just for vaccines
- How isolation, quarantine and masking protocols might change once the entire U.S. population is able to be vaccinated
Muller is an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the scientific director of clinical and community trials at Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute, which is part of Lurie Children’s.
Contact Kristin Samuelson at ksamuelson@northwestern.edu to arrange an interview.