On Wednesday, a panel of advisors from the U. S. Food and Drug Administration . The U. S. Department of Homeland Security voted unanimously to introduce Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine for children under 6 and Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE for children under 5.
Here are some main points you should know about those two messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines for this age group.
Moderna asked the FDA to authorize a dosing regimen for its vaccine in children 6 months to 6 years of age. Doses of 25 micrograms are administered 28 days apart. The adults gained a hundred consistent micrograms with the injection for their first two doses.
Pfizer and BioNTech are requesting a three-dose cycle of their vaccine for children 6 months and older than five years. The first two doses are given 21 days apart and the third dose is given at least two months after the second. 3 micrograms, below 10 micrograms given to children older than 5 to 11 years and 30 micrograms for others over 12 years of age or older.
Both companies have been researching low-dose versions for young children to test for the side effects of the vaccine.
Moderna’s vaccine is estimated to be 50. 6% effective in preventing symptomatic infections in children aged 6 months to less than 2 years and 36. 8% in children older than 2 to 6 years in a clinical trial of more than 5,000 subjects.
It is not yet known how effective the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is at preventing infection in others under the age of five due to the low number of symptomatic COVID-19 cases among children in its trial. An initial investigation based on 10 symptomatic cases COVID-19 cases suggested a vaccine efficacy of 80. 3% in this group. Once 21 children in the trial contract covid-19 symptoms, companies will need to determine the efficacy of the vaccine.
The company’s two trials showed that the vaccines generated an immune reaction to that seen in the older age groups.
No vaccine raised serious protective considerations in the trials.
Cardiac inflammation known as myocarditis and pericarditis has been shown to be a rare side effect of vaccines in young men, but few cases have been reported in the United States in children older than five to 11 years, and none in any of those trials for the younger age group.
Some young people have reported pain and swelling in the injection after vaccination with any of the vaccines.
Pfizer’s low-dose vaccine was sometimes better tolerated, and only more participants who won the vaccine complained of fever, irritability or fatigue compared to those who won a placebo. Between the ages of 2 and 4 years, 33. 7% of participants who won their momentary dose of the vaccine reported one such side effect, compared with 32. 2% who won a placebo.
For the Moderna vaccine, 58. 9% of children older than 3 to 5 years reported some type of reaction such as fever, headache or tiredness after receiving their momentary dose, with 37. 2% of participants winning placebo.
COVID-19 is milder in children than in adults, but there have been more than 440 COVID-19 deaths in the United States among those under the age of 5, according to FDA officials.
The data showed that, in older children and adults, vaccines counteract hospitalization and death, according to Dr. Matthew Harris, a pediatric emergency physician at Northwell Health in New York City.
People who had a COVID-19 infection and had won a booster shot were the most opposed to COVID-19, he said Rappler. com.