It might be sooner than you expect.
Vaccines have become increasingly crucial in protecting against the highly contagious Omicron variant, especially now that some schools across the country returned to in-person learning. Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already approved vaccinations for most elementary-age children, it has yet to give the thumbs up for a shot for kids 5 and under, but that could soon change.
While pediatric vaccine trials are still ongoing, Dr. Anthony Fauci says he’s hopeful that emergency use authorization for this age group could be granted “within the next month or two,” but expressed cautious optimism. “You don’t want to get ahead of the data and you don’t want to get ahead of the FDA, but I hope that it will be soon,” he tells Katie in an exclusive interview.
Dr. Fauci added that while the studies looked promising, all kids under the age of 5 will likely need two doses of the vaccine, plus the booster shot to have full protection. “The original studies were looking at children from six months to 24 months and then 24 months to four years, and the data on the children from six months to 24 months, given the dose they got, looked really good — it was non-inferior in its effect to the adults,” he says. “However, the group from 24 months to four years, it fell short of that, so it is likely that all of them will require three doses.”
So far, about 5 million kids are now eligible for the coronavirus vaccine. But there have been some challenges in expanding the use of the coronavirus vaccine to younger demographics. In December, Pfizer-BioNTech announced that data from its ongoing trial of children 2 to 4 indicate that the 3 micrograms it used — which was one-tenth of the adult dose — didn’t produce a strong enough immune response after two doses, but it did, in fact, trigger an immune response in infants between 6 months and 2 years old.
Jerica Pitts, a representative for Pfizer, told the Los Angeles Times that if a three-dose study is successful, the drug maker plans to submit its data for emergency use to the FDA for kids “6 months to under 5 years of age in the first half of 2022.” In contrast, Moderna is using a higher dosage for this under-5 age group that’s about a quarter of the dose that’s being used for adults, and this two-shot regime is already proving effective and safe. So far, it hasn’t shown some of the common side effects that have been associated with the vaccine, like the heart condition known as myocarditis.
But Pfizer and Moderna aren’t the only companies hoping to get their vaccine approved for younger age groups. Johnson & Johnson’s still in the midst of clinical trials for kids between the ages of 12 to 17 and it also has expressed plans to test on infants, including newborns. But it’s worth noting that the CDC has already recommended that Americans instead opt for Moderna and Pfizer after new data showed that a rare blood clotting syndrome is more common among those who recently got a J&J shot than previously thought.
These efforts are crucial in increasing vaccination rates across the board. Dr. Fauci believes getting a higher percentage of the U.S. population vaccinated remains a key strategy in curbing the pandemic. So far, around 208 million Americans — or 67 percent — have been fully vaccinated, while 248 million have received at least one dose.
“We want to get as many people vaccinated as we possibly can,” he says. “It’s so clear every time more statistics come out, it shows you the extraordinary dichotomy between people vaccinated versus unvaccinated. When you’re talking about hospitalizations and deaths, the difference is stunning.”
