US FDA Panel Recommends Pfizer’s Low-dose COVID Vaccine for 5 to 11-Year-Olds

Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was recommended on Tuesday, 26 October, by a medical panel of US government advisors for use in five to 11-year-olds.

The meeting was convened by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is expected to give its official go ahead soon, making 28 million young American children eligible for the shot by mid-November, AFP reported.

Amanda Cohn of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was quoted as saying, "It is pretty clear to me that the benefits do outweigh the risk when I hear about children who are being put in the ICU, who are having long term outcomes after their COVID, and children are dying.”

Meanwhile, several experts said that the shot should be a personal decision for families and that they would not approve of broad vaccine mandates in schools, AFP reported.

Are There Any Side-effects?

The vaccine was 90.7 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19, an analysis by Pfizer showed.

Meanwhile, Paul Offit, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, added that that the risk of myocarditis, which is the most worrisome side-effect, would probably be very low, since a lowered dose of 10 micrograms will be given to children instead of the 30 micrograms in older ages.

Moreover, FDA scientist Hong Yang presented a risk-benefit model, showing that at current infection rates, the vaccine would prevent more hospitalisations from COVID than they might cause from myocarditis.

Pfizer evaluated safety data from a total of 3,000 vaccinated participants during its clinical trial, with mild or moderate most common side-effects, including injection site pain, fatigue, headache, muscle pain and chills.

So far, the United States has fully vaccinated 57 percent of its total population. Though vaccine confidence has risen in recent months, the US remains behind every other G7 nation in percent of population fully vaccinated, AFP reported.

(With inputs from AFP.)