Dr. Amesh Adalja of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health discusses the COVID-19 vaccine authorization delay for children under five years of age and reacts to blue states ending mask mandates.
Pfizer and BioNTech asked the FDA on Wednesday to authorize three doses of their COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years old, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The company originally studied a two-shot regimen of its vaccine, similar to what adults and older children take, but paused their request for authorization in February while they studied the effectiveness of three doses.
Brendan Lo (13) receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at Northwell Health’s Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York, U.S., May 13, 2021. (REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton / Reuters)
Children younger than five take a 3 microgram dose, which is just a tenth of the 30 microgram shot that adults take.
Pfizer released results of the latest study last month that found three doses of their vaccine is 80.3% effective in children younger than 5 years old.
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“Our COVID-19 vaccine has been studied in thousands of children and adolescents, and we are pleased that our formulation for the youngest children, which we carefully selected to be one-tenth of the dose strength for adults, was well tolerated and produced a strong immune response,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said at the time.
