U.S. health officials on Saturday recommended Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines for young children, with the U.S. becoming the first country to allow injections of these two messenger RNA vaccines from 6 months of age.
On Friday, the American Medicines Agency (FDA) had already urgently approved it for these young children – who previously could not be vaccinated before the age of 5.
But the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the country’s main health agency, has yet to recommend them for injections to begin, which has now happened.
“We know millions of parents (…) want their young children vaccinated, and today’s decision allows them to do that,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.
The US government has made several millions of these infant doses available to states and has already begun shipping them to all corners of the country once FDA approval has been granted.
Joe Biden promised parents could make appointments to do the first shots starting next week and vaccines would be available in thousands of places, including pharmacies and hospitals.
Moderna’s vaccine, given in two doses one month apart, is now available in a reduced dose of 25 micrograms for children aged six months to five years (compared to 50 micrograms for children aged 6 to 11 and 100 for 12 to 17 year olds). , like adults).
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is approved for between six months and four years at a dose of 3 micrograms per injection, or one-tenth the dose used in adults.
Key difference: It has to be done in three doses from the start – the first two three weeks apart, the third eight weeks after the second. Children who receive it are therefore not optimally protected for several months.
But its side effects appeared to be less severe in clinical trials than after Moderna’s vaccine. About a quarter of the toddlers given Moderna developed a fever, particularly after the second dose. But it usually wore off after a day.
The United States has approximately 20 million children under the age of five.
Although the youngest are less susceptible to COVID-19, about 480 children in this age group have still died in the country. They can also develop a long COVID or severe cases of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome.
Pfizer plans to submit an application for approval for this age group to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in early July.