Five Big Questions About COVID Vaccines for Kids
Some good news finally—finally—appears to be on the horizon for roughly 28 million of the United States’ youngest residents. On the heels of an advisory meeting convened yesterday, the FDA is likely on the cusp of green-lighting a kid-size dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for Americans ages 5 to 11, a move that’s been months in the making.
After the agency’s expected emergency authorization, Pfizer’s formulation will need a recommendation from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who’s expected to weigh in next week, after her own advisory committee holds a vote. But the nation is ready: Already, 15 million pediatric doses of Pfizer’s vaccine—which will be administered at a third of the amount doled out to adults—have become available for states to order in advance.
Yesterday’s discussions were tense, understandably so. These immunizations will protect both the kids who get them and the people they mingle with, and they represent one of the few big levers the government has left to pull in the fight against the coronavirus. But as age eligibility for COVID-19 get tougher, and more emotional. This age group has been much less likely than others to come down with serious cases of COVID-19. Stacked up alongside that relative resilience are : and pericarditis, or inflammation of the heart and its surrounding tissue, which have appeared more commonly in boys and young men who have received mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. Most of the cases have been relatively minor—notedly less severe, for instance, than the heart inflammation that can follow a SARS-CoV-2 infection—but the phenomenon remains poorly understood.
