United States Authorizes Use Of Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine For Children Ages 12-15

Vaksin PfizerBioNTech. (Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Secretary of Defense)

JAKARTA - United States health regulators authorized the use of Pfizer BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12-15 starting Thursday, May 13, in line with plans to expand vaccination programs in the United States.

It is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be legalized in the United States for ages 12 to 15. Vaccinating younger people is considered an important step towards returning children to school safely. US President Joe Biden has asked states to immediately provide vaccines for younger teens.

President Joe Biden issued a statement praising the authorization, as a promising development in the United States' fight against the coronavirus.

"If you are a parent who wants to protect your child or a teenager who is interested in being vaccinated, today's decision is one step closer to achieving that goal", he said, according to Reuters on Tuesday, May 11.

The vaccine is already available under an emergency use authorization for people aged 16 in the United States. Vaccine makers say they have begun seeking full approval for immunizations in people aged 16 and over last week.

Peter Marks, director of the US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biological Evaluation and Research, said the state will likely be able to begin vaccinating children ages 12 to 15 after an advisory committee from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers expansion on Wednesday.

Most children with COVID-19 only experience mild symptoms or show no symptoms at all. However, children are not without the risk of becoming seriously ill, and they can still spread the virus.

Separately, Dr. William Gruber, a leading vaccine scientist at Pfizer, said authorizing vaccines for young adolescents would help the United States expand its immune population, protecting age groups that have not been fully spared from severe illness.

"I've heard from pediatricians and people in the community how lucky this is for a population of teenagers who have been restricted in terms of sports activities, drama clubs, and other things that we naturally want them to do", Gruber said.

Earlier, Pfizer said in March it found the vaccine produced a strong and safe, and effective antibody response at ages 12 to 15 in clinical trials.

In trials of 2,260 adolescents aged 12 to 15, there were 18 cases of COVID-19 in the group who got a placebo and none of them received the vaccine, resulting in 100 percent efficacy in preventing the disease.

For the record, about 46 percent of people in the United States have received at least one injection of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to CDC data. However, the pace of vaccination has slowed significantly since peaking at an average of seven days, more than 3.3 million doses a day in mid-April. On average it had dropped by more than a third to about 2.1 million doses per day as of May 4, according to CDC data.

The Pfizer vaccine is the only one allowed for 16 and 17-year-olds in the United States. The CDC says nearly 2 million people in that age group have received at least one injection. Many states only opened to individuals who were not at high risk in that age group in early April.

Vaccinating 12- to 18-year-olds could broadly allow schools and summer camps in the United States to relax covering the masking and social distance measures suggested by the CDC.

Pfizer hopes to have vaccine safety and efficacy data for children ages 2 to 11 by September, when it plans to ask that age group to be included in the emergency authorization.