New and Noteworthy from The New York Times, original article By Apoorva Mandavilli
The coronavirus vaccination developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has been found to be safe and effective in young children aged 5 to 11, the companies announced early Monday morning. The announcement clears the way for the vaccine to be approved for younger children, probably before the end of October.
The situation is critical: Children now account for more than one out of every five new cases, and the highly contagious Delta form has landed more children in hospitals and intensive care units in recent weeks than at any other point during the pandemic.
Pfizer and BioNTech intend to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for approval to use the vaccine in these children by the end of September. Millions of elementary school students might start getting shots around Halloween if the regulatory review goes as easily as it did for older children and adults — which took about a month.
According to Dr. Bill Gruber, a senior vice president at Pfizer and a pediatrician, data for children under the age of five would not be available until the fourth quarter of this year at the earliest. Moderna's vaccine studies in children under the age of 12 are also expected to be completed around that time, according to Dr. Paul Burton, the company's chief medical officer.
“There’s going to be a huge number of parents who are going to heave a big sigh of relief when they hear this,” said Dr. Kristin Oliver, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. “We’ve been waiting for these kids to be protected.”
Before the vaccine can be approved, FDA scientists must go through the data for any side effects that the company may have overlooked, which could cause a minor delay in the process.
Even when exposed to the Delta variant, children had a substantially lower risk of Covid-19 than adults. Despite this, a tiny percentage of infected children develop a life-threatening illness known as multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). Others may experience symptoms that last for months.
Nearly 30,000 children were hospitalized for Covid in August; the least vaccinated states reported the highest rates. At Seattle Children’s hospital, about half of the children who are admitted for Covid are older than 12, according to Dr. Danielle Zerr, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at the hospital.
“I’ve been dismayed at the fact that the sickest children in our hospital with acute Covid-19 or MIS-C are children who could have been vaccinated,” Dr. Zerr said.
The reopening of schools has exacerbated the spike as ideological debates about masking and vaccination mandates play out in communities. In Mississippi, one of the states without a mask mandate, approximately 6,000 students tested positive for the virus in one week, necessitating the isolation of over 30,000 students, teachers, and staff.
“This is one huge step toward beating Covid and returning to normalcy. I don’t think it changes the conversation around vaccine requirements for kids,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national union.
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NYT Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/health/covid-children-vaccine-pfizer.html