Pfizer and BioNTech announced on Tuesday that they were seeking approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to vaccinate children as young as 6 months old against Covid-19.
If given approval, children aged six months to five years old would be able to get vaccinated against Covid-19 with Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine. Currently, children aged five and above are able to get vaccinated in the US with Pfizer’s vaccine – though not Moderna and Janssen, which are restricted to over 18s.
Pfizer claimed in a press release that there was an “urgent public health need” for children under the age of five to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“This application is for authorization of the first two 3 µg doses of a planned three-dose primary series in this age group,” Pfizer explained, adding that the company was still awaiting trial data on a third dose for young children.
“COVID-19 cases and related hospitalization among children have spiked dramatically across the United States during the Omicron variant surge,” the press release claimed, noting that “children under 4 accounted for 3.2% of the total hospitalizations” several weeks ago.
Pfizer boasted that, if approved, its vaccine would be the first available for children under five in the US. According to the CDC, over 80% of Americans aged five and over have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Roughly 67.9% of Americans over the age of five are “fully vaccinated” with two doses of the vaccine.
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