Two children have fallen ill after a California vaccine clinic gave multiple kids doses of the COVID-19 shot higher than what is authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Sutter Health, in Antioch - around 30 miles east of Oakland - accidentally gave 14 children aged five to 11 dosages of the vaccine double the approved size, reported KABC in Los Angeles.
At lest two of those kids have since fallen ill while dealing with side effects of the vaccine, their mother says.
Children aged five to 11 are supposed to receive 10 microgram doses of the vaccine, a third of the size of the 30 microgram doses meant for people aged 12 and older.
An expert says the children will be fine long-term even though they are experiencing more severe side effects right now.
Denise Iserloth (pictured) reports that two of her children, aged eight and 11, fell ill after receiving doses of the COVID-19 vaccine twice the size of what is approved for their age group
Sutter Health (pictured), in Antioch, California, reportedly gave 14 children aged five to 11 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that were too large
'They absolutely failed my children and the other 12 children involved,' Denise Iserloth, the mother of the two children who fell ill, told the news station.
Iseloth's eight- and 11-year old both received doses that were double the size of the 10 microgram recommendation.
She said one of her children fell down twice because of the vaccine side effects, and both had to stay home from school Monday due to their illnesses.
Ten hours after her kids were jabbed, she said she received word from the clinic that they had given them an incorrect dose.
'We would have assumed that there was more in place to prevent this from happening, but obviously at this place there wasn't,' Shawn Iserloth, father of the two children, told KABC.
Denise said she does not know what the long-term side effects her children might face are.
'This weekend, 14 patients at our Antioch pediatric vaccine clinic received vaccines with an incorrect amount of diluent,' Sutter Health said in a statement.
'As soon as we learned of this, we contacted the parents and advised them of CDC guidance in this situation.
'The safety of our patients is our top priority, and we immediately reviewed our processes to help make sure this doesn't happen again.'
Luckily for the Iserloth family, the odds of the children suffering severe long-term side effects are very low.
"Headache, muscle aches, fever in some cases, chills, but they should go away in a day or two,' Dr Peter Chin-Hong, a infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told KABC.
'So I would say hold tight, don't worry too much and that's all expected.'
He said that 20 and 30 microgram doses were used in young children during clinical trials for the Pfizer vaccine when the company was determining which size was the most effective for the children, and there were no severe negative side effects reported.
This is not the first time an error like this has occurred in the short time since the Covid vaccines became available in young children.
Last week, a pharmacy in Loudon County, Virginia, was stripped of its right to administer COVID-19 vaccines after more than 100 children received incorrectly dosed shots.
In Virginia, the children received the adult-sized 30 microgram dose.
The shots recently became available to children aged five to 11 on November 3, only two weeks ago.
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