By The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Par­ents hop­ing to get their youngest chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19 got some en­cour­ag­ing news Mon­day.

Pfiz­er said three small dos­es of its vac­cine of­fers strong pro­tec­tion to young­sters un­der 5, ac­cord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary da­ta. That news comes a month af­ter Mod­er­na said it would ask reg­u­la­tors to OK its two dos­es tor the youngest kids.

But a few steps re­main be­fore the shots are avail­able. Health of­fi­cials and their ex­pert pan­els must first de­cide they are safe enough and pro­vide enough pro­tec­tion to au­tho­rize them.

FDA RE­VIEW

U.S. Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion vac­cine chief Dr. Pe­ter Marks has pledged the agency will “move quick­ly with­out sac­ri­fic­ing our stan­dards” in eval­u­at­ing tot-sized dos­es from both Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na.

The FDA has ten­ta­tive­ly set a June 15 date for its sci­en­tif­ic ad­vis­ers to pub­licly re­view the two com­pa­nies’ vac­cines. Af­ter the ad­vis­ers weigh in, the FDA de­ter­mines whether to au­tho­rize the shot.

Mod­er­na is seek­ing clear­ance for two low-dose shots for chil­dren un­der age 6 while Pfiz­er hopes to of­fer three ex­tra-low dos­es to kids un­der age 5 — dif­fer­ences due to how each com­pa­ny stud­ied its vac­cine. Cur­rent­ly the U.S. rec­om­mends vac­ci­na­tions for every­one age 5 and old­er, and Pfiz­er is the on­ly op­tion for those chil­dren. Mod­er­na for now is used on­ly in adults in the U.S.

CDC RE­VIEW

If ei­ther vac­cine is cleared for the lit­tlest kids, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion would have to rec­om­mend whether all ba­bies, tod­dlers and preschool­ers should re­ceive them or on­ly those at high risk of a se­ri­ous ill­ness.

The CDC would con­vene its own pan­el of ad­vis­ers to de­bate the rec­om­men­da­tion be­fore is­su­ing its of­fi­cial guid­ance.

ROLL­OUT

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has said the shots will roll out rapid­ly, and most tots are ex­pect­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed in pe­di­a­tri­cians’ of­fices or health clin­ics. It’s not clear how much de­mand there will be to vac­ci­nate the youngest kids, how­ev­er. Pfiz­er shots for 5- to 11-year-olds opened in No­vem­ber, but on­ly about 30% of that age group have got­ten the rec­om­mend­ed ini­tial two dos­es.