Brandt uses an iPad to track his symptoms following the first dose in Pfizer’s trial.
Brandt uses an iPad to track his symptoms following the first dose in Pfizer’s trial.Photo: Christine Brandt
Epidemiology is not high on your average teen’s list of hobbies. But it is for Andrew Brandt, a 13-year-old who lives in New Orleans and is enrolled in Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine trial for children.
“When the pandemic started, it was sad because I did want to help people and I just kind of felt like I really couldn’t do that,” Andrew, Make It.
Finding the Pfizer trial for his age group felt like a tangible way to pitch in, and also fit his interest in science and medicine.
In the beginning of 2021, Andrew asked his mom if he could enroll in the trial. At the time, Pfizer’s Covid vaccine had already been approved for emergency use in people over 16, and the company was recruiting younger volunteers ages 12 to 15.
“Initially, it was agony” deciding whether or not to let him enroll, Christine Brandt, his mother, tells CNBC Make It. “What kind of parent is like, ‘Yes, please use my child as a guinea pig?’”
Andrew had done a lot of research about how mRNA vaccines work and the potential risks of being in a clinical trial. “I like to try a lot of things and learn everything I can,” he says.
After relaying his findings to his parents, the family consulted with everyone from his doctors to grandparents to family friends who are physicians before making the decision.
Brandt will get his blood tested for antibodies regularly for the next two years.Photo: Christine Brandt.
In early January, Andrew and his mom went to Ochsner Medical Center for his first dose of the vaccine or placebo.
“I was pretty calm because I was in the second stage, so they deemed it almost certainly safe,” Andrew says. “I knew that if I got sick, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
He was sent home with a paper disc used to measure any redness or swelling where he got the shot, as well as an app to use to keep track of his symptoms each day.
Though neither trial participants or researches officially know whether Andrew got the vaccine or a placebo (it’s a double-blind trial), Andrew says he had a robust response after receiving the first injection. He says he had a fever, felt sore and fatigued and had pain around the injection site.
Within 36 hours, the symptoms “abated instantly, as if a light switch had turned them off,” his mother says.
At school, Brandt’s friends and teachers (who weren’t yet eligible for the vaccine), wanted to know about his experience.
“A lot of my friends just had lot of questions because, I mean, it’s not something that we just know a lot about or are taught,” Andrew says. As it turns out, one of his classmates was also in the trial.
Brandt’s peers were most curious how the shot felt (how did he says it felt?), if he got sick and whether or not it was worth it, to which “I’d definitely say yes,” he says.
