Children ages 5 to 11 now authorized to receive Pfizer vaccine for emergency use

On the 29th of October 2021, the Food and Drug Administration in the United States approved use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid 19 Vaccine for people aged 5 to 11 in the case of emergencies. Independent advisory committee experts had a majority vote supporting the notion that the vaccine should be distributed to 5 to 11 year olds. On the back of FDA’s evaluation of this data, the authorization was made.

The data shows that Immune responses for people of this younger age group (5 to 11) were similar to the immune response of 16 to 25 year olds. The study proved that the Pfizer vaccine was over 90% successful in preventing Covid 19 for children aged 5 to 11, during the trial it was revealed that over 3000 children of this age did not experience any serious side effects

The way this will be delivered is slightly different to older patients, still with 2 doses separated by at least 3 weeks, but the dosage is much lower at just 10 micrograms compared to the 30 micrograms that are used for people aged 12 and over.

In the United States, data shows that just under 40% of cases for children are made up by this specific age group. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that about 8300 of these cases ended up in hospitalization. Data from October 17th shows that almost 700 Covid 19 deaths in the United States were reported and just under 150 of these were from this age group (5 to 11).

It has been agreed that the possible benefits of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people 5 years old and older significantly exceed the possible risks.