Since the pandemic has emerged, the administrations have been working a lot on developing vaccines for everyone so that their health remains secure. It has not been easy since then. The nations now have been dealing with both delta and omicron variants and the combination of both will lead to more cases of hospitals and deaths.
Availability Of Vaccines Is Still Not Clear For Children Below 5 Years Age
The speed at which omicron is spreading needs to be considered important and the use of effective measures and approaches must also be done to deal with it.
Amidst all the chaos, the category that still remains out of sight is children aged up to 5 years and below. There are still no advancements about what vaccines will be developed for them and what measures can be taken to prevent them against the deadly virus. For children, it is important to be more immune since they become easily vulnerable to infections and diseases.
Earlier this month Pfizer claimed that they are working on developing an effective vaccine for kids between 2-4 ages. The clinical trial results were not satisfactory enough.
During the month of October when the cases were increasing at an awkward rate the demand to safeguard kids between 5-11 years raised and the US FDA gave approval to Pfizer to vaccinate this particular age group.
Right now, the vaccine produced by Pfizer has been authorized by the FDA to be given to children of age 5 years and above. Further, those aged 16 years and above are eligible to receive the booster dose since the month of December when the results show the inefficiency of the vaccine and the medical experts demanded the federal government to further amend the booster shot eligible criteria.
As the COVID cases are again rising, it is troublesome for some parents to protect their children from the new variant which is considered as the most transmissible version of the original virus in the US.
Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that we have a great sense of responsibility to safeguard the lives of our future talent. Also, the US FDA authorized the emergency use of vaccines for the group between 12-15 years.
Now some health care officials are again asking some tough questions from vaccine developers to manufacture efficient vaccines for the kids below 5 years as they are now more prone to the new variant and also they are yet to receive the initial dose of vaccine.
As per some sources, the vaccination drive might start from mid-January 2022 and also Pfizer will be considering more clinical trials for kids aged between 6 months to 5 years as they want this age group to stay safe because the immunity power is lower in kids as compared to adults and it will lead to more hospital admissions and deaths.
According to a report, the cases amongst the kids are increasing by more than 24 percent and since the start of the pandemic, more than 7 million children have been found positive. In the past month, 164,000 new cases were found and it surely raises the eyebrows of medical experts. Although the death rate amongst kids is very low as compared to adults.
