Covid-19 Live Updates: The Latest on Vaccines for Children 5 to 11

Image

A key advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration voted overwhelmingly to recommend the use of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine in 5- to 11-year-olds, bringing the vaccine a big step closer to about 28 million children. Shots could be offered as early as next week.

The panel endorsed giving the age group one-third of the dosage given to people 12 and older in two shots, three weeks apart. The committee’s recommendations on whether to authorize vaccines are not binding, but the F.D.A. typically follows them in the days after the vote.

That will turn the matter over to the C.D.C., which has its own expert panel scheduled to weigh in next week.

The F.D.A.’s experts voted after regulators argued that thousands of children between the ages of 5 and 11 have been hospitalized with Covid-19 and nearly 100 have died over the course of the pandemic.

During a long debate beforehand, some committee members questioned whether every child in the age group really needed the vaccine or whether it should be limited to those at high risk of severe Covid-19.

Dr. Paul Offit, a panelist who heads the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said it was “nerve wracking” to make decisions affecting millions of children based on studies involving just a few thousand participants.

But he said: “The question is when do you know enough? And I think we certainly know that there are many children between 5 and 11 years of age who are susceptible to this disease who could very well be sick and are hospitalized or die from it.”

Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the agency’s division that oversees vaccine approvals, told the committee Covid-19 is now one of the top ten causes of death among children 5 to 11. Nearly two million in that age group have been infected and 8,300 have been hospitalized, a third of whom have needed intensive care, he said.

Federal officials hope that the pediatric dose can help close a major gap in the U.S. vaccine campaign that has worried parents, educators and public health leaders. If the F.D.A. grants authorization, about 28 million children will become eligible. Only the youngest, children under 5, would remain uncovered.

Dr. Fiona Havers, a viral diseases specialist at the C.D.C., said that children aged 5 to 11 make up 10.6 percent of all cases but only 8.7 percent of the population. Children have higher levels than adults of the neutralizing antibodies that are essential for preventing infection, she said, but are at least as likely as adults to be infected, she said. She said there appear to be many more cases than are publicly recorded.

Covid hospitalization rates in the 5 to 11 age group are three times as high for Black, Hispanic or Native American children as for white children, she said. More than…