FDA Panel Recommends Low Doses Of Pfizer Vaccine For Kids Aged 5-11

(RTTNews) - A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee said on Tuesday that a lower dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine should be administered for children ages 5 to 11. This recommendation is an important step forward in getting around 28 million young children vaccinated against the virus even as the delta variant spreads fast across the country.

The recommendation by the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will now be taken into consideration by the FDA, which is supposed to make public its decision in a few days time. The Advisory Committee unanimously voted for the decision with 17 supporting it and one person abstaining.

Following this recommendation, next week a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory group will give its own opinion. If that committee also decides in the positive and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky signs the deal, then young kids will begin getting their vaccine shots as soon as possible.

Many parents prefer rolling out of vaccine shots for young kids as schools have opened all over the country and COVID-19 cases are rising among the kids, mainly driven by the Delta variant.

As per data released by the FDA, children aged 5-11 account for around 9 percent of all reported Covid cases in the country. The number of new cases of COVID among kids is high, with as many as 1.1 million cases added over the past six weeks, said the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Some committee members were of the opinion that vaccination of the younger people will put the U.S. on the path to Covid's "endemic" phase, where the virus is still circulating but is not as prevalent or dangerous. Other members said that there were still unknowns, like the rate of myocarditis in young kids, but gave importance to the benefits of the shots

Commenting on the decision, committee member, Dr Amanda Cohn said, "We don't want children to be dying from Covid, even if it is far fewer children than adults and we don't want them in the ICU."

The Biden administration plans to start vaccinating young kids as soon as it's authorized by the FDA and CDC, which will happen sometime next month. The administration said it had enough doses to inoculate all 28 million 5-11-year-olds. The vaccine will be administered in smaller dosing and with smaller needles to make it easier.

Earlier this month, Pfizer had asked the FDA to authorize its vaccine for young kids. The company released data that showed a two-dose regimen of 10 micrograms, a third of that used for teens and adults, is safe and generated a strong immune response in clinical trials.