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 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday authorized the
vaccine for children aged 12 to 15, offering relief to parents eager
to get their children back to schools and summer camps. The action
by the CDC group is an important, but not required, final seal of
federal regulatory approval.
The youngest age previously approved for the Pfizer vaccine was 16
years old.
Some states, including Georgia, Delaware and Arkansas, began
offering the vaccine to young teens on Tuesday. California's main
COVID-19 website said families could start making appointments for
the younger group on Thursday.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which
provides recommendations to the CDC, voted 14-0 to back the vaccine
after reviewing trial evidence. That showed no one in the 12-to-15
age group who received the vaccine got COVID-19. There were no
severe allergic reactions.
Moreover, the vaccine produced robust antibody responses in the age
group and showed 100% efficacy in the trial, with no cases of
symptomatic COVID-19 among the fully vaccinated adolescents.
The move will open vaccination to about 17 million adolescents, CDC
Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement, saying the agency
officially recommends the vaccine.
The vaccination "will decrease transmission within their family,"
said Dr. Henry Bernstein, a member of the advisory committee and
professor of pediatrics at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.
"It will contribute to community immunity, and it allows the kids to
more safely go back to camps this summer, and back for in-person
school."
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 About a third of all Americans
have been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC
data. But the pace of vaccination has slowed in
the recent weeks.
The rollout of a vaccine for adolescents should
help limit the spread of the virus at a time
when more contagious variants are circulating,
and could shorten the road to normalcy for
Americans.
Children have been considered by health
officials as being at a lower risk for severe
COVID-19, but they can still spread the virus.
More than 1.5 million cases have been reported
among 12 to 17 year olds, and as more adults
become vaccinated, adolescents are accounting
for a higher proportion of total cases.
Adjusted for underreporting, the working group
estimated 22.2 million U.S. COVID-19 infections
in those aged 5 to 17.
Pfizer is running a separate vaccine trial in
children as young as 6 months old, and has said
it expects data on 2 to 11 year olds in
September. The 2,260 participants in the
12-to-15 age group - half of whom were given
placebo - were tested as an expansion of
Pfizer's more than 46,000-person trial.
(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru;
Editing by Caroline Humer, Peter Henderson, Bill
Berkrot and Cynthia Osterman)
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