Israel could start vaccinating adolescents 12 to 15 years old in May, health officials said Thursday April 1, after Pfizer and BioNTech laboratories announced that their Covid-19 vaccine is 100% effective on this age group.
Read also: Covid-19: in Israel, thanks to vaccination, "life is back to normal"
The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, based on innovative messenger RNA technology, was the first anticoronavirus vaccine approved in the West at the end of 2020. Its use has been validated in Israel and other countries for people aged 16 and over. more.
A field study of 1.2 million people in Israel, where more than half of the population of 9.2 million received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, found it to be effective in 94%.
On Wednesday, March 31, the two laboratories added that clinical trials conducted on 2260 adolescents aged 12 to 15 in the United States had "
demonstrated 100% efficacy and robust antibody responses
", hoping that the vaccination of this age group starts before the next school year.
"
We are awaiting approval from the FDA (United States Medicines Agency),
" Nachman Ash, the Israeli coronavirus coordinator, said on Kan public radio.
“
This will then be discussed here by our vaccination team.
It will take a few more weeks, between a month or two
”.
Children are less exposed to severe cases of the disease, while transmitting it less for the youngest of them (under 10 years).
Their vaccination was therefore not a priority until now.
However "
we are witnessing an increase in the number of children hospitalized
" some "
without symptoms suffering from complications, to the point that they collapsed
", declared Thursday the director of the Israeli Ministry of Health, Hezi Levy, at the army radio.
He estimates that the vaccination of 12-15 year olds could start in May.
BioNTech and Pfizer have launched clinical studies in a first group of children aged 5 to 11.
Others, between 2 and 5 years old, are expected to receive a first dose next week as part of the study which will also cover children 6 months to 2 years old.
Israel officially recorded 6,214 deaths out of a total of 833,281 patients.
