Authorities to decide soon on COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for children aged 5 to 11

Biden administration COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will likely make a decision on whether to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for children under 12 years of age. ‘fall.

Regulators should have data in the coming weeks to see if injections for children aged 5 and 11 are needed, he told ABC News “This Week” on September 19.

“Over the next few weeks, as we move into October, we may see children’s vaccines get enough data to be presented in terms of safety and immunogenicity,” said Fauci, director of the National Allergy Institute. and infectious diseases. , who has conducted hundreds of media interviews since the pandemic began in early 2020.

Fauci has received a lot of criticism in recent months over whether his agency knowingly funded rescuing researchers working in a virology lab in Wuhan, China.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authorized immunizations for children aged 12 and older in 2021. Some school districts, including the one that oversees Los Angeles public schools, have made it mandatory for children to return to class. fully immunized children.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company, which makes one of the world’s most widely used COVID-19 vaccines, will likely release clinical vaccine data for children aged 6 months to 5 years in October. . Data on the COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 will arrive sooner, he said.

Federal health officials have argued that young children should be vaccinated due to the spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19.

“Currently, there are still trials going on, so the agency has to wait for the company to submit data for those trials,” Peter Marks, FDA vaccine regulator, said Aug. 23. “We definitely want to make sure we get it right.”

On September 17, the FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee overwhelmingly voted against recommending booster vaccines for the general public and instead voted to recommend them to people aged 65 and over. During this meeting, a number of scientists expressed concern about the side effects associated with boosters in young people and children.

Dr James Hildreth, a voting member of the FDA’s expert panel, said he had “a serious problem with myocarditis in young people.” Another expert, Dr Melinda Wharton, said she “doesn’t feel comfortable” recommending boosters for young people because of the risk of myocarditis.

Researchers found in August that COVID-19 vaccines used in the United States are more likely to land teenagers in hospital than COVID-19 itself. When analyzing reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), scientists found that men aged 12 to 15 without serious underlying health conditions were up to six times more likely to be hospitalized after getting their second Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine dose as a COVID-19 infection.