The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Covid-19: in the United States, injections of vaccines for toddlers will be able to begin

2022-06-18T20:58:21.040Z


The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control on Saturday recommended the use of messenger RNA vaccines in children


The American health authorities recommended this Saturday the vaccines against the Covid-19 of Pfizer and Moderna for the very young.

The United States thus becomes the first country to make injections of these two messenger RNA vaccines possible from 6 months of age.

On Friday, the American Medicines Agency (FDA) had already authorized them urgently for these young children – who until now could not be vaccinated before 5 years old.

But the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the country's main health agency, still had to recommend them so that the injections could begin, which has now been done.

“We know that millions of parents (…) want to have their young children vaccinated, and with today's decision, they can,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky in a statement.

The US government has made available to states several million of these infant doses, and had already begun to send them to the four corners of the country as soon as the FDA authorization was issued.

Two doses with Moderna, three for Pfizer

Joe Biden promised that parents could start making appointments next week to perform the first shots, and that vaccines would be available in thousands of places, including pharmacies and hospitals.

Moderna's vaccine, in two doses given one month apart, is now available for children between 6 months and 5 years old at a reduced dosage of 25 micrograms (compared to 50 micrograms for 6-11 year olds, and 100 for 12-17 years old, like adults).

Read alsoHow long can you stay positive

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is authorized between 6 months and 4 years at the rate of 3 micrograms per injection, or one tenth of the dosage used for adults.

Main difference: it will have to be done from the outset in three doses - the first two at three week intervals, the third administered eight weeks after the second.

Children receiving it will therefore not be optimally protected for several months.

But its side effects appeared in clinical trials to be less severe than after Moderna's vaccine.

About a quarter of young children given Moderna developed a fever, especially after the second dose.

But it usually subsided after a day.

Pfizer wants to file for Europe in July

The United States has approximately 20 million children under the age of five.

Even if the youngest are less vulnerable to Covid-19, some 480 children in this age group have nevertheless died in the country.

They can also develop long Covid, or severe cases of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome.

Pfizer said it wanted to file an application for authorization for this age group with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) “in early July”.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2022-06-18

You may like

Business 2024-03-09T04:58:58.046Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.