CDC advisory committee recommends COVID vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds

A masked child watches a healthcare worker perform an injection.

Enlarge / With new knowledge, we’re in a position to broaden vaccinations to ever-younger populations. (credit score: Roberto Jimenez Mejias / Getty Photographs)

On Wednesday, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices really helpful that the CDC approve the usage of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the 12- to 15-year age group. The choice comes two days after the FDA granted an emergency use authorization for a similar age group and can assist the US additional restrict the pool of people that can unfold infections or foster the evolution of recent viral variants. Formal CDC approval might come rapidly, given current historical past.

Given the FDA’s earlier determination, the transfer might sound anticlimactic. However having the FDA and CDC formally on the identical web page is reassuring, and a number of other state-run vaccination applications are awaiting the CDC’s OK earlier than increasing into that age group. Personal suppliers and insurance coverage firms have been additionally diverse of their response to the FDA’s determination and have been ready for the CDC.

The info that supported the approval was fairly decisive, as a small Part III medical trial of two,260 adolescents noticed 16 instances of COVID-19, with each single one occurring within the placebo group. Negative effects have been much like these skilled by older individuals, with a short interval of flu-like signs. The committee was tasked with contemplating whether or not the advantages outweighed the dangers; given the minor unwanted side effects and the more and more apparent advantages of vaccination, it is not a shock that the vote in favor of approval by the committee was 14 in favor, none opposing, and a single recusal. The CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, is overwhelmingly more likely to observe the committee’s advice, almost certainly earlier than the day is over. (We’ll replace this story if and when this happens.)

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