Vaccines to protect children aged five to 11 from COVID-19 would likely be available in the US next month, US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said on Sunday.
A review panel of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found last week that the benefits of Pfizer-BioNTech shots for the younger age group outweighed the risks, setting up an advisory meeting today.
With final approval from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) likely to come the following week, Fauci said he believed pediatric vaccines would start going into arms early next month.
Photo: Reuters
“If all goes well, and we get the regulatory approval and the recommendation from the CDC, it’s entirely possible, if not very likely, that vaccines will be available for children from five to 11 within the first week or two of November,” Fauci told ABC’s This Week.
Pfizer has claimed its COVID-19 vaccine is 91 percent effective in the five to 11 age group.
The extension of vaccine availability to those younger than 12 is seen as a key step in getting a pandemic that has killed more than 735,000 in the US under control.
Despite polls showing that more parents than previously are willing to allow their children to be vaccinated, there remains significant hesitance. Only one-third of parents with children aged five to 11 say they would vaccinate their child right away, according to healthcare company Kaiser Permanente, while one in four say they would not allow it under any circumstances.
“We know we have a lot of work to do,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “Those survey data look very much consistent with where we were with adults last December, when we rolled out vaccines for adults. We have done a huge amount of hard work over the last 10 months — education, communication, providing information, getting vaccines to really convenient places.”
“We’re doing absolutely all of that hard work now,” she said. “As soon as we have both the FDA authorization and the CDC recommendations there will be vaccine out there so children can start rolling up their sleeves.”
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