ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — The University of Rochester Medical Center has been chosen to participate in the Moderna pediatric COVID-19 vaccine trials.

URMC was notified Monday and is still waiting on details, but a spokesperson said they will definitely be participating.

Dr. Mary Caserta is a professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at URMC and spoke about the trials with News 8 Tuesday.

“We’re all very excited in pediatrics to think we’re finally gonna be able to start testing these vaccines in children so we can get to the right dose and see that they’re safe and start vaccinating all our children,” said Dr. Caserta.

She said it’s a moving target right now but they will tentatively be testing children from under age 12 to infants. She said this is important to achieve 80% herd immunity, as children make up roughly 23% of the U.S. population.

“Children acquire the virus and they also transmit the virus so the only way we’re gonna protect all of us is to vaccinate all of us.”

Dr. Caserta said URMC is trying to be as prepared as possible to hopefully have a large number of children from Rochester participate. They’ve started to enroll families in a vaccine screening protocol, which will eventually include the COVID-19 trial.

“We’re interested in inviting all of the Rochester community to participate in these trials,” she said. “Right now we actually are enrolling families into the screening protocol so we have all their information we have their contacts so when the COVID vaccine trials are available they’ll be able to evaluate and quickly decide whether they want to move into the vaccine trials or not.”

Anyone interested in enrolling into the screening can call or email URMC.

Dr. Caserta also said according to Dr. Fauci the vaccine won’t be ready and approved for all children until late 2021 or early 2022 to ensure everything is done safely and correctly.