WASHINGTON (AP) – The government’s top infectious disease expert said Friday he expects to see some children begin vaccinating against COVID-19 in the coming months. It is a necessary step to achieve widespread immunity against the virus.
Vaccines are not yet approved for children, but testing is already underway for children under 12.
If these trials are successful, Dr. Anthony Fauci said they would be followed by another round of testing until they are 9 years old.
“Hopefully, when we get to late spring and early summer we will have children who can be vaccinated,” Fauci said in a White House coronavirus briefing.
Fauci waited a while for vaccines to be plentiful. Even older adults have difficulty getting shots at this time. As of Thursday, only 1.3% of Americans had been fully vaccinated with the two required doses of currently available vaccines.
Children make up about a quarter of the population, and in order for the United States to reach “herd immunity” or widespread resistance, between 70% and 85% of the population must be vaccinated.
“Children tend not to get as seriously ill as adults, but they can get sick and some have died tragically,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health expert and emergency physician who supports Fauci’s goal. “Children can also be vectors of transmission and vaccinating them is important as we strive to achieve herd immunity.”
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has emergency approval for use in people over 16 years of age. The Moderna vaccine is for people over 18 years of age.
The Pfizer clinical trial for children 12 to 15 years of age is fully registered and the pharmacist may request emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for children 12 years of age or older at some point in the first half. of this year. The trial of Moderna for 12 to 17 years still recruits.
Since initial tests to validate the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines involved tens of thousands of people, age-related tests in children can be done using smaller groups.
“You don’t want to have to … go through an efficacy trial, where tens of thousands of children participate,” Fauci explained. “What you can do is in a much smaller trial, measured in hundreds up to a couple thousand … what we call safety and … immunogenicity.” This is a term for determining whether the vaccine successfully elicits an immune system response.
After a frustratingly slow start, the United States now administers about a million shots a day to adults, though that pace is still considered insufficient. President Joe Biden has talked about 1.5 million shots a day, if it can be done. His administration has set a target of 100 million shots in its first 100 days.
Two more vaccines from American companies are approaching the stage where the FDA can evaluate them for approval. One from Johnson & Johnson requires only one shot.
Biden has also set a goal of reopening most schools this summer and has led government agencies to work with communities to move them forward.
Its legislation on the U.S. rescue plan in Congress calls for $ 50 billion to fund a major expansion of evidence, which is deemed necessary for the safe reopening of schools and businesses. This is because robust testing can detect early outbreaks before they spread through a community and cause shutdowns. Tests in the United States had a chaotic start and experts say it is still insufficient in many parts of the country.