US: COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged 5 to 11 could come in early November, says Dr. Fauci

COVID-19 vaccinations for children aged between 5 and 11 in the United States are likely to be available in the first two weeks of November, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on 24 October, Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “If all goes well,” said Fauci in his broadcast message, “and if we [US] 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 5 to 11 years of age within the first week or two of November.” 

The US Food and Drug Administration [FDA’s] Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is set to meet on Tuesday tomorrow, 26 October to weigh Pfizer’s vaccine efficacy for the children to be administered in the US, and whether or not to recommend FDA authorisation for kids.

“You never want to get ahead of the FDA in their regulatory decisions, nor the CDC and their advisers on what the recommendation would be, but if you look at the data that’s been made public, the data look good,” Fauci said in televised remarks. 

Pfizer shows 91% efficacy in kids aged 5 to 12

The FDA released a study earlier last week stating that based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, approximately 1.8 million kids aged five to 12 were confirmed to have contracted the novel coronavirus. At least 143 COVID-19-related deaths among kids were registered in the US through 14 October 2021, the FDA’s Pfizer report said, adding that in this same age group, there have been 8622 COVID-19 related hospitalizations through 18 September 2021. “The pediatric burden of COVID-19 likely exceeds that of seasonal influenza. Children can also suffer from post-acute sequelae after COVID-19,” said FDA.  

The US FDA listed the study that suggests that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 has proved to be 91% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections among children. The efficacy was confirmed in clinical trials where at least 2,268 children aged 12 and up were administered with one-third the dosage of the vaccines in a two-dose regime three weeks apart.

Meanwhile, the US CDC’s vaccine advisory panel will convene in the first week of November to authorise the Pfizer mRNA jab for kids aged 5 to 11. This comes as just last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the booster shots for recipients of the Moderna and the Johnson & Johnson recipients for increased protection against the COVID-19 disease. The CDC is also reportedly monitoring the highly contagious delta variant substrain of coronavirus ‘delta plus’ which currently accounts for just 0.1% of cases in the US, as per the CDC data.