The United States could start vaccinating children under five against the new coronavirus next June 21. The deadline was advanced this Thursday by Ashish Jha, the White House’s Covid-19 response coordinator, according to The New York Times. Even so, the expert pointed out that, for this to happen, it is FDA required green light (Food and Drug Administration, the North American drug regulator) and then a recommendation from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), something that hasn’t happened yet.
I am not here to prejudge the outcome of the process. [de aprovação das vacinas]but the management is working hard to plan all kinds of scenarios based on the result,” Jha said at the press conference.
EITHER The FDA expert committee will meet on June 15 analyze the data on the safety and efficacy of the vaccines presented by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna for children from six months to five years. The experts will have to make a decision shortly after this meeting and if they authorize inoculation, the CDC will still have to make a recommendation before starting the vaccination process, reports Reuters.
This White House official indicated that the Government has enough vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna to start vaccination once they are approved and that states, pharmacies and community health centers can start ordering from this friday.
10 million vaccines will be made available, and the Biden administration has called for the first doses to be distributed to places where the most vulnerable children are, such as pediatric hospitals, and places hardest hit by the pandemic.
Our expectation is that in a few weeks all parents who want to vaccinate their children will be able to get an appointment. We will ship the doses as soon as possible,” added Ashish Jha.
Pfizer and BioNTech said in May that the three doses of the Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months to 5 years had 80% effective in preventing serious illness with the Omnicron variant. The dose of the vaccine for this age group is one-tenth that of adults, CNBC said.
Moderna, for its part, revealed that the two doses of the vaccine had a 51% effective for the Omnicron variant in children under two years of age and 37% between two and five years of age. The inoculation dose is 25 micrograms, and in adults it is 100 micrograms.
Source: Observadora
