Covid 19 vaccine has always been under the scrutiny of the medical experts in the country. Since the introduction of the covid 19 vaccine on 18 December 2020, there have been lots of speculations and news about the same in the United States.
The Covid Vaccine For Young Children Still In The Authorization Process
During the early stages of the vaccination drive, only Pfizer and Moderna received the approval to vaccinate adults of 65 years and above. According to the US CDC, every one of 5 years and above citizens in the US is eligible to receive the initial two doses of vaccines.
Only the Pfizer vaccine has been authorized for kids between 5-11 years. Last week, Moderna also received the full authorization of the vaccination in the country from the US Food and Drug Administration.
Currently, Covid 19 vaccination has not received authorization for children below 5 years of age. Thus, risking around 18 million children between the age of 0 to 4 years.
The sudden surge and spike in the number of Covid cases especially amongst children have forced FDA to think about the Covid 19 vaccination for kids.
During this winter peak of the Omicron, the variant has been very harsh on the children and adolescents in the United States. According to the data and resorts available with the US CDC, the hospitalization and death rate increased amongst the kids when compared with the previous strain peak time.
However, the vaccine authorization this time is a little different as compared to the previous authorization for adults and teenagers. On Tuesday, Pfizer and BioNTech made an official announcement stating that they are planning to submit clinical trials reports from Phase 3 to the Food and Drug Administration in the US.
The submission will include data of children between the age of 0 to 4 years as the previous studies did not find better results because 2 doses of vaccine were not able to induce the required antibodies.
The companies are anticipating a go-ahead for emergency authorization.
In December, the study on the Covid vaccine and its protection revealed that the Covid 19 vaccine provided optimum protection to the 90% of kids who got their vaccine shots. The Covid 19 vaccine was found to be effective for younger kids between the age of 0 to 4 years.
However, the dose of the Covid vaccine was one-third of the dose that is given to adult children 5 to 11 years. Thus, the vaccine makers decided to take some more trials of the covid vaccines. In December the Omicron variant spiked dramatically.
The FDA is expected to pursue a different authorization strategy by authorizing the first two doses of Covid vaccines first although the two doses do not offer substantial protection from the virus. Third dose authorization will be done later in the series.
The meeting will be held on 15 February 2022 and the decision will be made to authorize the vaccination by mid of March 2022 the kids of less than 5 years will start receiving the vaccine.
