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Advisors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unanimously recommended the country’s first coronavirus vaccines for children under 5 on Saturday, one of the last steps before Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech can be given to as much as 19 million children in the United States.
CDC Director Rochelle Valensky is expected to approve the recommendation later Saturday, allowing some clinicians, pharmacies and other providers to start vaccinating as early as Monday. Doses began to be delivered on Friday after approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which found both vaccines safe and effective.
Completing this long, deliberate regulatory process, with the expected final signature from Walensky coming at the start of a busy summer travel season, will be a welcome relief for families who have seen a lack of vaccination among children as a major obstacle to intergenerational gatherings. Health officials plan to step up public campaigns to promote vaccination as a still underutilized weapon against ongoing pandemic.
Advisors from the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration recommended Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines for children under 5 years of age. (Video: Jackson Barton, John Farrell / The Washington Post)
Pediatricians who placed orders two weeks ago expect the doses to arrive in the coming days. Some impatient parents are looking for meetings for young children who may have never seen the inside of a grocery store as a child, severely limited by fear of covid-19 infection. Biden the administration plans to set up pop-up clinics in children’s museums and libraries.
“This is an opportunity that one does not often get involved in preventing the death of children, young children,” said panelist Beth Bell, a professor of global health at the University of Washington. “Every death, of course, is a tragedy. The death of a small child is an incredible tragedy. We know that this disease kills children. “
Oliver Brooks, chief medical officer at Watts Healthcare Corp., who is also on the panel, said parents and families need to be prepared for future coronavirus options because the virus will not go away. “We don’t know what’s coming,” Brooks said. “But I feel comfortable saying that vaccination will be beneficial … Today we have taken a big step forward.”
The Advisory Panel voted 12 to 0 to recommend the vaccines; three members were absent.
Parents, after consulting with pediatricians, will have to decide which vaccine to receive. They can consult the Vaccines.gov website for pharmacies and health care providers that have the vaccine. Pharmacies have the right to vaccinate children who are at least 3 years old.
The two newly approved vaccines use different doses, different number of injections and different intervals between vaccines. Regulators do not prefer each other because of differences in the way clinical trials have been conducted, said CDC employee Sarah Oliver.
Any vaccine is better than no vaccine, Oliver told the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices during his two-day meeting, which ended on Saturday.
The CDC emphasized that children who had previously been infected with the virus still needed to be vaccinated to ensure protection against re-infection. “We know that we are also not good at predicting which children will unfortunately have severe or even potentially fatal results with [coronavirus] infection, “Oliver said Saturday. Vaccination is the surest way to get broad protection against current and future circulating options, she said.
Coronavirus vaccines can be given at the same time as other vaccines, including on the same day or at any time before or after another vaccine, she said.
Clinical trials have included thousands of children during the wave with an omicron variant from last winter. The side effects of vaccinations are minimal – pain at the injection site is the most common – and are comparable to those seen with other pediatric vaccines.
The FDA is approving a coronavirus vaccine for young children with vaccines, possibly next week
Although deaths in young children are relatively uncommon compared to adults, covid-19 is the leading cause of death among children and adolescents, including children ages 1 to 4, according to the CDC. During the CDC Advisory Panel meeting Medical experts stressed that the disease is serious enough among young people that it should be treated as a risk similar to other diseases for which children are routinely vaccinated.
“These very clear data should simply destroy the myth that this infection is not life-threatening in this age group,” said panel member Sarah Long, an expert in pediatrics and infectious diseases at Drexel University.
“I want to make sure for all parents and the public that we recommend this vaccine,” Long said Saturday. “All children six months of age and older should be immunized against [covid-19]”
This latest green light for CDC pediatric vaccines marks the historic scientific and regulatory effort that began in early 2020, when vaccine manufacturers competed to develop a powerful weapon to fight the new coronavirus.
The first vaccines fell into the hands of health workers in December 2020, and the following year the majority of the population was vaccinated. Regulators have approved boosters, as well as for the elderly and those with vulnerabilities.
But the youngest group – aged 6 months to under 5 – has been abandoned by the vaccination campaign so far, pending research to show that vaccines are safe and effective and, most critically, worth recommending. for babies and young children who are the least likely to have a severe case of covid-19.
6 tips for international travel with children under 5 years
Although most children with covid-19 recover without problems, data presented at the CDC panel on Friday showed that the highly contagious virus has infected thousands of children who were too young to be vaccinated. Children from 6 months to 4 years currently have a higher rate of emergency visits and hospitalization for covid-19 than older children, and more than half of younger children hospitalized do not have basic medical conditions, according to the CDC.
The virus has killed more than a million people in the United States, the highest number of deaths in any nation during the pandemic. Vaccinations have helped reduce mortality from infections, as well as therapeutic agents, including antivirals.
In recent months, coronavirus subvariants with mutations that avoid the neutralizing effects of antibodies from vaccines or previous infections have spread across the country, and government officials are debating whether and when to reformulate vaccines to better suit new strains of the virus.
So far, the newly approved vaccines are the same as they have been all along, with the difference that the youngest children will receive much lower doses.
Millions of parents with babies and young children have been waiting for these photos, which they consider important for the resumption of indoor meetings, birthdays and other gatherings. with family and friends.
When the CDC’s advisory committee opened its online meeting Friday for public comment, Caitlin Com, a special education teacher, said her 2-year-old had never been inside. grocery store or museum and learned about the world through books. She said her daughter told her that one day she wanted to go to an aquarium like Curious George. The little girl also gives her stuffed animals coronavirus tests and says, “Don’t worry, Mom, the coronavirus test is negative,” Comm said.
The impact on childcare is particularly severe. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that parents of children under 5, younger parents, blacks and Spanish parents and parents with lower household incomes are more likely to report work breaks due to childcare needs. than parents of older children, white parents and higher income households.
Doctors in Florida say they can now order pediatric vaccines
Experts predict that the initial absorption of the vaccine will be modest, with many parents choosing a wait-and-see approach. Another recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that only 18% said they planned to vaccinate their children immediately, while 27% said they “definitely won’t” vaccinate their child.
The United States began ordering vaccines from the federal government two weeks ago. When the pre-order deadline expired on Tuesday, the United States had ordered 3.8 million doses out of 10 million doses from Pfizer and Moderna. initially available, according to a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
Every state, except Florida, pre-ordered doses. The Florida Department of Health said in a statement Thursday that it was not involved in the “complicated process of spreading vaccines.” The department does not recommend a pediatric coronavirus vaccine for healthy children, the statement said, a policy that runs counter to CDC guidelines. On Friday, following FDA approval and public criticism of the state’s decision not to pre-order doses, Florida health officials told pediatricians they were able to place orders for the newly approved vaccines.
The two vaccines use the same technology, but differ in key ways.
Moderna’s regimen for children 6 months to 5 years of age consists of two doses of 25 micrograms each – a quarter of the adult dose – given at four-week intervals. It has been shown to be 51% effective in preventing disease in children aged 6 months to 2 years and 37% effective in children aged 2 to 5 years. Moderna said it was testing a third dose or booster.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children from 6 months to 4 years is three injections of 3 micrograms each – one tenth of the age …
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