Pfizer’s Covid-19 shot for children age five to 11 was backed unanimously by advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a vote that will help usher in a new phase in the pandemic response.
The CDC’s advisory committee on immunisation practices (ACIP) voted 14-0 in favour of giving young children the shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech after it was cleared on Friday by US regulators.
“Today is a monumental day in the course of this pandemic and one that many of us have been very eager to see,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky said. “For almost two full years schools have been fundamentally changed; there have been children in second grade who have never experienced a normal school year.”
Matthew Oster, a paediatric cardiologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, said he believes five- to 11-year-olds have a relatively low risk of developing myocarditis from the shots. 'We will watch and see for sure — and they may have some — but I don’t think it’s nearly to the extent of cases seen in older adolescents and young adults'.
A surge in infections fuelled by the Delta variant and the return of in-person learning have increased calls for younger children to be immunised. Though children generally don’t get as sick as adults from Covid-19, many parents and caregivers are keen to give them, as well as older and ill people who interact with them, a shield against infection.
Safety data in children look very good, said Camille Kotton, an ACIP panel member, adding that she would feel comfortable having her own children immunised if they were in that age group.
“We have accumulated a tremendous amount of safety data with hundreds of millions of Americans,” said Kotton, who is also the clinical director of transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Children should be vaccinated “to prevent death as well as major long-term effects of having this devastating infection”.
While CDC advisers recommended approval of the shot, some expressed concern about myocarditis, an inflammatory heart condition that’s been seen in some recipients. Health officials have been paying close attention to the risks posed by myocarditis after the shot compared with the overall risks of Covid-19.
Matthew Oster, a paediatric cardiologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, said he believes five- to 11-year-olds have a relatively low risk of developing myocarditis from the shots.
“We will watch and see for sure — and they may have some — but I don’t think it’s nearly to the extent” of cases seen in older adolescents and young adults, said Oster, who is also on the CDC Covid-19 response vaccine task force. Oster said he made that determination based on the general epidemiology of myocarditis, since paediatric trials were too small to detect such an effect.
Moderna said on Sunday that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was delaying a decision on authorising its Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 17, citing concerns about myocarditis. The FDA review may not be completed before January, the company said.
— Bloomberg News. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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