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Monday, March 17, 2025

Pfizer to seek COVID booster for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds

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1067 days ago
20220414
FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2021, file photo, a health worker administers a dose of a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic in Reading, Pa. Pfizer, Thursday, April 14, 2022, wants to expand its COVID-19 booster shots to healthy 5- to 11-year-olds. U.S. health authorities already urge everyone 12 and older to get one booster dose for the best protection. And those 50 and older have the option of a second booster. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2021, file photo, a health worker administers a dose of a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic in Reading, Pa. Pfizer, Thursday, April 14, 2022, wants to expand its COVID-19 booster shots to healthy 5- to 11-year-olds. U.S. health authorities already urge everyone 12 and older to get one booster dose for the best protection. And those 50 and older have the option of a second booster. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

By LAU­RAN NEER­GAARD-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

 

Pfiz­er said Thurs­day it wants to ex­pand its COVID-19 boost­er shots to healthy el­e­men­tary-age kids.

U.S. health au­thor­i­ties al­ready urge every­one 12 and old­er to get one boost­er dose for the best pro­tec­tion against the newest vari­ants -- and re­cent­ly gave the op­tion of a sec­ond boost­er to those 50 and old­er.

Now Pfiz­er says new da­ta shows healthy 5- to 11-year-olds could ben­e­fit from an­oth­er kid-sized shot.

In a small study, 140 young­sters who’d al­ready got­ten two shots were giv­en a boost­er six months lat­er, and re­searchers found the ex­tra shot gen­er­al­ly revved up their im­mune re­sponse. But a clos­er look at 30 of the chil­dren found a 36-fold in­crease in virus-fight­ing an­ti­bod­ies, lev­els high enough to fight the su­per-con­ta­gious omi­cron vari­ant, Pfiz­er and its part­ner BioN­Tech said in a press re­lease.

The da­ta has not been pub­lished or vet­ted by in­de­pen­dent ex­perts.

Pfiz­er test­ed the kid boost­er while omi­cron was surg­ing this win­ter. While COVID-19 cas­es now are at much low­er lev­els in the U.S., in re­cent weeks an even more con­ta­gious ver­sion of omi­cron, called BA.2, has be­come the dom­i­nant type lo­cal­ly and around the world.

In the com­ing days, the com­pa­nies plan to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion to au­tho­rize a boost­er for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds. They al­so plan to share the da­ta with Eu­ro­pean and oth­er reg­u­la­tors.

Vac­ci­na­tions are gen­er­al­ly less ef­fec­tive against the omi­cron vari­ant than ear­li­er ver­sions of the coro­n­avirus -- but they do still of­fer strong pro­tec­tion against se­vere dis­ease. While COVID-19 is a big­ger threat to adults, young­sters can get se­ri­ous­ly ill. But reg­u­la­tors will have to de­cide if healthy el­e­men­tary-age kids re­al­ly need a boost­er, and if so, when.

The Pfiz­er shots are the on­ly vac­cine avail­able to U.S. chil­dren. Those ages 5 to 11 re­ceive one-third of the dose giv­en to every­one 12 and old­er. Just over a quar­ter in the younger age group have got­ten two dos­es since vac­ci­na­tion opened to them in No­vem­ber, short­ly be­fore omi­cron struck.

The U.S. hasn’t yet al­lowed vac­ci­na­tions for chil­dren un­der 5. But cer­tain 5- to 11-year-olds -- those with se­vere­ly weak­ened im­mune sys­tems -- al­ready are sup­posed to get three dos­es, to give that high-risk group a bet­ter chance of re­spond­ing.

 

COVID-19PfizerCovid Booster


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