Vaccines & heart health: What you should know

Learn answers to common questions about COVID vaccines and what experts want you to know about the intersection of COVID, vaccines, and your heart health.

Transcript

00:00

Parents need to decide, should we vaccinate or should we let our kids get COVID? because everyone unvaccinated is going to get it

00:06

if they haven't already. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:15

What are some of the questions that we're hearing about the COVID vaccine? Dr. Tanya, why don't you start us off with that?

00:21

Yeah. You know, I've been giving the COVID vaccine to kids aged 5 to 11 in my office. And I feel like almost every parent asks me

00:28

about myocarditis because it was a very rare side effect seen mainly in older teen boys, 1 in 40,000, so extremely rare.

00:39

Almost everyone fully recovered within a month. There was no permanent heart damage. And so what I often explain to people

00:46

is that this was a rare side effect. However, it's more important to know that if you catch COVID-19, and other viruses,

00:53

it is a much higher risk for myocarditis heart inflammation and heart issues. I would add that I think the dosing is really

01:00

important information for parents to realize. I have gotten a lot of questions about the 5 to 11 vaccine.

01:07

And inevitably, people do not know that this is a third of the dose that the 12-plus were getting

01:14

and that the data, actually, from the trial showed minimal side effects after vaccination like fever,

01:21

headache, and fatigue, which I think usually is really worrisome for parents, right? And so I thought the data looked incredibly encouraging.

01:30

And I am so excited, personally, that my eight-year-old is vaccinated.

01:37

Hopefully, this is one step further towards getting to that light at the end of the tunnel that I think we're all so eager to see.

01:44

The other thing that we don't talk about that much is long COVID, which we do see in kids. What I see in my office is the kids that did get COVID-19,

01:51

every month they're getting sick-- sinus infection after pneumonia after ear infection-- and needing more antibiotics.

01:58

So there are all these other things that you may not realize that can be so serious and the reason why we really don't