Starting Thursday, Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana will begin administering the COVID-19 vaccine to anyone between 12 and 15 years old. A Florence pediatrician enrolled her four kids in the COVID-19 clinical vaccine trial at Cincinnati Children’s.
“I talked to Ben, who was 15 at the time, and Ty, who was 13 at the time, and asked them," said Dr. Amanda Dropic. "I said, ‘here's the data, here's the evidence. Are you guys interested?’ And they both decided that they did want to go ahead and do it."
Her sons got their shots back in December. Not long after, Amanda learned that Children’s was opening a trial for 5- to 12-year-olds, too.
“I asked my two littles, I said, ‘you guys, are you interested in doing this? You can talk to your brothers, they both decided that they definitely wanted to go ahead and do it.’ So we got them all enrolled,” she said.
While she was a bit nervous, Dropic believes it was the right decision.
“Of course everybody's a little bit worried, right? Whenever you're doing something new, regardless of everything, you know, looking at the studies and everything, it is something new," she said. "So you're a little bit nervous.”
Dropic said Children’s “has such a great reputation,” she felt comfortable trusting them with her children’s care in a clinical trial.
“They made it very clear to us at any time, if we wanted to not do it anymore, we could with no penalty, so the kids understood that going forward," she said.
When his mom asked if he wanted to participate in the trials, Ben Dropic's answer was “absolutely.”
“I felt like it was really important. I felt like number one, the people working on it know what they're doing,” he said. “You know, these are people who have been working on mRNA specifically. Vaccines have been going on, or at least been in the works for a long time, and these people wouldn't start trials if we weren't sure that they were safe on humans.”
Even though the Dropics live in Kentucky, the family commended Gov. Mike DeWine on Ohio’s new vaccine initiative, where vaccinated adults could win $1 million or a full four-year scholarship to any college or university in the state of Ohio for younger winners.
Still, Dr. Dropic says getting the vaccine should be a reward in and of itself.
