8-Year-Old Receives CCP Virus Vaccine by Mistake

A nursing student holds a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at Bishop Airport in Flint on March 29, 2021. Jake May/The Flint Journal via AP

An eight-year-old boy received a dose of a CCP virus vaccine by mistake in the Dallas County area in Texas, according to reports.

The Grand Prairie Fire Department confirmed to local news outlets that the unnamed boy received the vaccine in the past week at a vaccine location in Grand Prairie. The site is run by Dallas County, which requires people to register online to receive vaccination for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19. On the form, the date of birth is required.

The father believed it was okay for his child to be vaccinated because after he had registered the boy online, he was given a QR code, and it wasn’t until the father spoke to pediatrician Marcial Oquendo that he realized there had been a mistake, reported KXAS-TV.

Grand Prairie Fire Chief Robert Fite told the outlet, “If they got a QR code, part of our assumption is they understand who should be registered and who should not.”

Currently, CCP virus vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States are the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Under the emergency use authorizations, those 16 years old or above are authorized to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and those 18 years old or above are authorized to receive the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

“Children and adolescents outside these authorized age groups should not receive COVID-19 vaccination at this time,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website.

Fite said he plans to find out which paramedic administered the shot and investigate the matter further to understand how the mistake was made. Fite noted that the boy was vaccinated in a drive-up location where about 3,800 people were also vaccinated on the day. He questioned how a child under 18 could get registered via the online form.

“If there was a fail system in place, then we wouldn’t even have to worry because you couldn’t get registered,” he told the outlet.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins in a statement to WFAA explained that when the father registered his child on the county website, the child was put—via an automated sorting process that identified minors as not eligible—into a group with others who were also not eligible.

When Texas lowered the age of eligibility from 50 and older to 16 and older, “human error” caused all the minors—including the child—to be moved into an eligible group, without removing anyone who was under 18, Jenkins said.

A third party company oversees the Dallas County vaccination registration list. Jenkins told KXAS-TV that the county’s IT department is working with the third party company to prevent such a situation from happening again.

He added, “We’ve got more training for our medics, so they know if they see a person who does not appear to be old enough for that vaccine that they understand that we don’t give vaccine to anyone under the age of 16, or anyone under the age of 18 if it’s Johnson & Johnson or Moderna.”

Pfizer announced March 31 that a small clinical trial of 2,260 U.S. children aged 12 to 15 showed no cases of COVID-19 among the fully vaccinated recipients, compared to 18 among those who were given placebo shots.

Moderna announced mid-March that it had begun a trial of its CCP virus vaccine aimed toward children aged six months to 11 years. The trial is expected to end in June 2023. It has also begun testing its vaccine in children aged 12 to 17, with the trial expected to be completed in June 2022.