In a unanimous vote, a committee of independent experts convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today recommended the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of 5 and 11. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky will take the committee’s advice into consideration and make a final decision shortly.
The CDC committee’s recommendation follows last week’s decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the youngest population yet. The vaccine for this age group is one-third the adult dose and will be given in two doses, one month apart. The FDA authorized the shot for the entire age group, but it was up to the CDC to determine whether all children ages 5 to 11 should get vaccinated, or whether only a subset should.
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Ultimately, the CDC committee decided that all kids in that age group—about 28 million—should get vaccinated against COVID-19. The members weighed evidence presented by Pfizer-BioNTech as well as data from CDC experts on how prevalent COVID-19 infections are among this population of children, and how the disease affects them. CDC scientists noted that 1.9 millions cases of COVID-19 have occurred among children ages 5 to 11, and that while most cases are mild, 8,300 children have been hospitalized and 94 have died of the disease so far.
Members reviewed data from two studies conducted by Pfizer-BioNTech that involved nearly 4,500 children. Those studies showed overall that children getting the vaccine were less likely to get COVID-19, and if they did, they were less likely to experience severe disease or require hospitalization. There were no deaths associated with the vaccine in these studies.
That data needed to be balanced against the known side effects of the vaccine, which include Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C)—a rare condition that causes fever, loss of blood pressure and damage to different organs…
Source : time
