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Advisors at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday unanimously voted to recommend the use of Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine for children and adolescents ages 6 to 17.
CDC Director Rochelle Valensky is expected to sign the recommendations soon, which will allow the US government to begin introducing the Moderna vaccine for these age groups.
This would mean that both mRNA COVID vaccines would be available to all Americans over 6 months of age.
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The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, based on a similar RNA messenger technology, is available for teens over the age of one and for children aged 5-11 from October.
Approximately 25 million American children and adolescents in this age group have not yet received a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine, CDC employee Sarah Oliver told the expert advisory panel.
There are concerns that Moderna, which is given at a higher dose than Pfizer / BioNTech, may cause higher incidence of heart inflammation, especially in younger men.
The agency said last week that more recent data for the United States showed that although there was a numerically higher rate of myocarditis or pericarditis with Moderna vaccination, the findings were not statistically significant, meaning they could be due to chance.
The FDA only approved the Moderna vaccine last week for the 6-11 age group, along with a marketing authorization for children 6 months to 5 years of age. (Report by Manas Mishra and Leroy Leo in Bengaluru and Michael Herman in New Jersey; edited by Bill Bercrot)
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