A panel of advisors to the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management will vote on Wednesday on whether or not to suggest a COVID-19 vaccine for youngsters aged 5 to 11 that was approved final week by the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration (FDA).
The vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE has been accessible in the US since Might to youngsters aged 12 to fifteen.
Here’s what you could know concerning the vaccine and kids:
When will COVID-19 vaccines be accessible for 5- to 11-year-olds?
The pictures are prone to be accessible as quickly as Wednesday. The CDC director will make a closing resolution on whether or not the vaccine must be utilized in kids after the CDC’s advisory panel votes on its advice late Tuesday afternoon.
The place will the pictures be accessible?
Relying on the state, in pediatricians’ workplaces, pharmacies and faculties. Some states are additionally organising mass vaccination facilities and cellular vaccination clinics to extend kids’s entry to pictures.
Is it the identical vaccine because the grownup one?
Sure, however at a decrease dose. Pfizer and BioNTech have requested for authorization of a 10-microgram dose of the vaccine, a 3rd of the dose dimension given to folks 12 and older. The vaccine remains to be a two-shot vaccine, with doses given round three weeks aside.
What if my little one is a small 5-year-old, or an enormous 11-year-old? Ought to they get the youngsters’s dose?
The dose relies on age and never weight, based on Brittany Kmush, an epidemiologist and professor at Syracuse College. “Vaccines are completely different than treatment within the dosing technique and it has extra to do with the maturity of the immune system slightly than weight or metabolism,” she stated.
Is it secure?
Security knowledge from greater than 3,000 kids who acquired the vaccine in Pfizer’s 4,500 participant medical trial was typically corresponding to that for 16- to 25-year-olds. The commonest unintended effects for youngsters included fever, complications and chills, which have been typically reported much less incessantly and have been milder than for 12- to 15-year-olds.
Each the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Inc vaccines have been linked to uncommon circumstances of coronary heart irritation referred to as myocarditis, particularly in younger males.
Nonetheless, Pfizer prompt that the speed of myocarditis within the age group is prone to be decrease than noticed in vaccinated 12- to 15-year-olds due partly to the decrease dose.
Does it work?
Pfizer and BioNTech stated final month their COVID-19 vaccine induced a strong immune response within the 5- to 11-year-olds in its medical trial. The businesses additionally stated the vaccine confirmed 90.7% efficacy towards COVID-19 in the identical group.
If kids are much less prone to get severely sick from COVID, why hassle vaccinating them?
Pediatric vaccination is a public well being device to stop infectious ailments, even ones that would not have excessive charges of mortality or hospitalization in kids. Youngsters in the US already obtain vaccines for diseases which have related or decrease ranges of associated mortality in youngsters, like hepatitis A, chickenpox, rubella and rotavirus. Youngsters can unfold COVID-19 to different, higher-risk teams even when they don’t have signs.
(Reuters)