The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reportedly planning to authorize Pfizer’s booster vaccine to be used on children 12 to 15 years old on Monday.
Regulators are also set on letting children and adults get their third shot of Pfizer’s vaccine five months after receiving the second dose, instead of the current recommended six months, people with knowledge on the FDA’s workings told The New York Times on Thursday.
Pfizer’s booster is currently approved for people 16 years and older, though children as young as five years old are eligible for the two-dose series.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory committee plans to vote mid-next week on whether to recommend the revisions to Pfizer’s booster use. If the CDC committee agrees with the FDA’s expected approvals, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky could quickly endorse the changes.
It comes amid the Omicron variant spreads and as the US broke a single-day record with nearly half a million coronavirus cases – more than 488,000 – on Wednesday, according to a New York Times database. That is almost double the figure of the worst days last winter.
More than 70% of Americans 12 years and older are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. At least 1.8million children have tested positive for Covid-19, agency data shows.
Children appear better able to withstand coronavirus infections versus adults, but a record number of kids have been hospitalized since Omicron was detected. During the week of December 21 to 27, an average of 334 youth under the age of 17 were admitted to hospitals per day with Covid-19, a 58% hike from the prior week, according to the CDC. Most of the children who were hospitalized were not vaccinated.
‘It’s just so heartbreaking,’ said Dr Paul Offit, an infectious-disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. ‘It was hard enough last year, but now you know that you have a way to prevent all this.’
The CDC on Thursday released two studies supporting coronavirus vaccines for children. One study showed it was very rare for children ages five to 11 who took the Pfizer jab to develop a serious health problem. The second study, including hundreds of pediatric hospitals in US six cities last summer, found that nearly all adolescents who got seriously ill with the coronavirus had not been fully vaccinated.
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