Food and Drug Administration advisory panel votes unanimously to endorse Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11
The U.S. moved a step closer to expanding COVID-19 vaccinations for millions more children as a panel of government advisers on Tuesday endorsed kid-size doses of Pfizer’s shots for 5- to 11-year-olds.
The virus is “not going away. We have to find a way to live with it and I think the vaccines give us a way to do that,” said FDA adviser Jeannette Lee of the University of Arkansas. If the FDA authorizes the kid-size doses, there’s still another step: Next week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will have to decide whether to recommend the shots and which youngsters should get them.
While there is less COVID-19 among 5- to 11-year-olds, they still have faced substantial illness – including over 8,300 hospitalizations reported, about a third requiring intensive care, and nearly 100 deaths. The kid dosage also proved safe, with similar or fewer temporary side effects – such as sore arms, fever or achiness – that teens experience. At FDA’s request, Pfizer more recently enrolled another 2,300 youngsters into the study, and preliminary safety data has shown no red flags.
But with cases falling across the U.S., the FDA panel had to consider whether the pandemic might recede so much that more children could face side effects from the vaccine than would be protected from COVID-19.
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