Information for parents and caregivers of children ages 6 months and older
For the best protection, CDC recommends COVID-19 vaccines for everyone 6 months and older and boosters for everyone 5 years and older, if eligible.
Before recommending COVID-19 vaccination for children, scientists conducted clinical trials. Then, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective for everyone 6 months and older.
Ongoing safety monitoring shows that COVID-19 vaccination continues to be safe for children. The known risks of COVID-19 and possible severe complications outweigh the potential risks of having a rare, adverse reaction to vaccination.
Learn more about the safety of COVID-19 vaccination for children.
Tips for Parents and Caregivers:
Vaccinating children can:
Tips for Parents and Caregivers:
Reported side effects are mild, temporary and like those experienced after routine vaccines. Some children have no side effects.
Learn more about potential side effects in children after COVID-19 vaccination.
Enroll Your Child in v-safe
After getting your child vaccinated, use v-safe to get health check-ins and share how your child feels after COVID-19 vaccination.
COVID-19 vaccine dosage is based on age on the day of vaccination, not on a child’s size or weight. This is also true for other routinely recommended vaccines, like hepatitis A and hepatitis B vaccines.
Tips for Parents and Caregivers:
Emerging evidence indicates that people can get added protection by getting vaccinated after they have been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. For children who have been infected, their next dose can be delayed 3 months from when symptoms started or, if they did not have symptoms, when they received a positive test.
If your child tests positive for COVID-19 after getting their first shot, they should wait until their isolation period has ended before getting their second shot.
Routine vaccination is an important preventive care service that should not be delayed.
If multiple vaccines are given at a single visit, each injection will be given in a different injection site, according to recommendations by age.
We take your privacy seriously. You can review and change the way we collect information below.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Cookies used to make website functionality more relevant to you. These cookies perform functions like remembering presentation options or choices and, in some cases, delivery of web content that based on self-identified area of interests.
Cookies used to track the effectiveness of CDC public health campaigns through clickthrough data.
Cookies used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on CDC.gov through third party social networking and other websites. These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes by these third parties.
Thank you for taking the time to confirm your preferences. If you need to go back and make any changes, you can always do so by going to our Privacy Policy page.
