FDA: Pfizer’s Covid Vaccine Appears To Be Very Effective For Young Children
Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine has already been licensed for children between the ages of 12 and 15.
Photo: JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP / Getty Images
Federal health regulators said late Friday that doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine appear highly effective in preventing symptomatic infections of coronavirus in elementary school children and did not cause unexpected health problems, as the United States considers administering initial doses of Covid vaccines for children from 5 to 11 years old, reported CNBC.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published its analysis of data from Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines before a public meeting planned for next week, to discuss if the Covid-19 vaccines be given to the nation’s approximately 28 million children ages 5 to 11.
In their analysis, the scientists of the FDA concluded that, in almost all settings, the benefit of the vaccine to prevent hospitalizations and death from Covid-19 it would outweigh any possible serious side effects in children. But the agency’s reviewers stopped short of asking for permission to Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer.
The agency will pose that question to its panel of independent advisers next Tuesday and weigh their advice before making its own decision.
If the FDA clears the vaccines Covid-19 for children between 5 and 11 years old, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will make additional recommendations on who should receive them beginning the first week of November. Children could start getting vaccinated early next month, and the first kids to get vaccinated will be protected by Christmas.
Vaccine injections Pfizer Covid-19 Full potency are already recommended for anyone 12 years and older, but pediatricians and many parents eagerly await such protection for younger children, to stop infections from the more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus and help maintain children at school.
The FDA review confirmed Pfizer’s results published earlier, showing that the two-dose injection was nearly 91% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 infections in young children.
Most of the data in the Pfizer study was collected in the United States during August and September, when the delta variant had become the dominant Covid-19 strain. The FDA review found no new or unexpected side effects, the majority of which consisted of arm pain, fever, or malaise.
While children are at a lower risk of serious illness or death than older people, Covid-19 has killed more than 630 children 18 and younger in the United States, according to the CDC.
Almost 6.2 million children have been infected with the coronavirus, more than 1.1 million in the last six weeks. as the delta variant increased, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
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