American adolescents will soon be able to receive the vaccine against Covid-19. The US Medicines Agency (FDA) has given the green light for this segment of the population to benefit from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Vaccination has hitherto been possible for people aged 16 and over with severe co-morbidities. Now, the German-American Messenger RNA vaccine has been extended to Americans between the ages of 12 and 15, the United States Drugs Agency (FDA) has announced through a communicated.
It’s about “An important step in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic”, said Janet Woodcock, the acting chief of the FDA. “If you are parents and want to protect your child, or a teenager who wants to be vaccinated, today’s decision is one more step towards that goal “, added US President Joe Biden. A meeting of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the country’s main federal public health agency, is due to be held today. The first injections should begin this Thursday in the country.
100% effectiveness against symptomatic forms
The United States will not be the pioneers this time around, since Canada on May 5 became the first country to extend the remedy to this segment of the population. In making its decision, the FDA relied on data from a clinical trial involving more than 2,000 adolescents aged 12 to 15. Divide into two groups, about half of which received the vaccine and the rest a placebo. The side effects analyzed were “Similar“ than those seen in people over 16, said Peter Marks, an FDA official. Among the vaccinated group comprising 1,005 American adolescents, no cases of coronavirus were identified, compared with 16 among the 978 adolescents who received the placebo. Which represents “100% efficiency“ against severe forms of the disease, he commented. The researchers also pointed out that the serum-induced immune response has been studied in 190 adolescents aged 12 to 15 and compared to that of 170 older people (16 to 25 years old). Results: the immune response “Was even better“ in the group of young Americans, commented Peter Marks.
1.5 million Americans have already contracted Covid-19
In general, children and adolescents are less susceptible to severe forms of Covid-19 unlike adults. Therefore, vaccination is not a priority. However, this segment of the population is not immune to infection, the figures say. From March 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021, about 1.5 million Americans between the ages of 11 and 17 contracted the virus, according to health officials nationwide.
Children aged 2 to 11 will be next
The Pfizer and BioNTech laboratories do not want to stop there since they hope to file in September an emergency authorization request for their vaccine for a segment of the very young population, it concerns children aged 2 to 11 years. For now, this filed application relates only to the United States.“In the smallest, ‘different, lower dosages’ may be used, and specific forms of the disease exist, such as what has been called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.”, justified Peter Marks. “We want to make sure that we don’t see anything untoward in the youngest children”, he said.
A future request for authorization for children from 6 months to 2 years could emerge “in the fourth quarter”, had revealed the boss of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, during a conference call on the quarterly results of the American laboratory.
