The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent vaccine experts recommended a booster shot of Pfizer Covid for children aged 5 to 11 years old on Thursday, because of rising infections across the country and potential immunity from the first two doses declines.
The committee voted 11-1 in favor of strengthening the age group. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will likely sign off on the panel’s recommendation, which would allow pharmacies, doctors’ offices and other health care providers to begin administering the shots.
Fallopian tube infections are on the rise again in the US as more and more infectious sub-omicron bacteria run rampant across the country. According to CDC data, the US is reporting an average of more than 99,000 new infections per day, up 22% from last week. Hospitalizations have also increased 22% in the past week, with more than 3,000 people being hospitalized on average each day, according to the data.
Although Covid is generally less severe in children than in adults, more children aged 5 to 11 years have been hospitalized during the omicron wave than at any other time during the pandemic. according to CDC data. Public health officials are also concerned about children developing long-term health conditions such as long-term Covid and multisystem inflammatory syndromeMIS-C for short, is a serious condition associated with a Covid infection that affects multiple organ systems.
More than 8,000 children have developed MIS-C since the start of the pandemic, with children aged 5 to 11 most commonly affected in 46% of reported cases. according to CDC data. Sixteen children of this age died from MIS-C, 23% of the total 68 deaths reported in children of all ages.
Currently, only 29% of children ages 5 to 11 in the US complete the first round of Pfizer immunizations, according to the CDC. According to CDC data, since the pandemic began, more than 4.8 million children of this age have contracted Covid and more than 15,000 have been hospitalized.
As cases have increased, the immune protection offered by vaccines against infection has waned as more time has passed since people received their primary series of vaccines. Omicron and its sub-variants are also adept at dodging antibodies that block infection.
According to CDC data, in the 5 to 11 age group, the Covid vaccine was 43% effective against infection 59 days after the second dose during the period when the omicron became the predominant Covid variant. However, vaccination was 74% effective in preventing hospitalization in children aged 5 to 11 years against all variants of the virus.
Pfizer presented data from a subgroup of 30 children aged 5 to 11 years showing that the third dose increased levels of infection-preventing antibodies against omicrons 22-fold one month after administration compared with two doses. Charu Sabharwal, Pfizer’s director of vaccine clinical research, said increased antibody levels should offer real-world protection against the omicron variant, although the company did not present data on performance in Thursday’s meeting.
Sabharwal said most reactions to the third dose in a broader group of 401 children were mild to moderate, with fatigue and headache being the most common. Fever rates were low and none of the children reported a temperature higher than 104 degrees F or 40 degrees C. There were no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis, or inflammation of the heart. Ten children had swollen lymph nodes, but the cases were mild and resolved within a week of onset, according to Pfizer data.
More than 18 million doses of Pfizer have been given to 5- to 11-year-olds in the US since the two-dose series was approved for this age group in November, according to CDC data, the majority of reactions to vaccines. please, 97%, not serious. The most common side effects from the shots are fever, vomiting, headache, dizziness, and fatigue.
Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, following a second Pfizer injection is rare in boys aged 5 to 11 years with 2.7 cases reported per million doses administered, much lower than in boys. 12 to 15 year olds reported 48 cases of myocarditis per million doses, according to data from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
The CDC has verified 20 cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, in children 5 to 11 years old as of April following Pfizer vaccination. The majority of myocarditis patients were boys, 17 were hospitalized and 1 died. The boy died with no signs of infection, developed a fever 12 days after dose 1, followed by abdominal pain, vomiting, and died on day 13.
CDC, in a large study published in Aprilfound that the risk of myocarditis following Covid-19 infection was higher than with the Pfizer and Moderna shots.
