US moves a step closer to expanding Covid vaccinations for millions more children as a panel of government advisers endorses kid-size doses of Pfizer's shots for 5- to 11-year-olds
Heather Haworth, left, holds the hand of her 12-year-old son Jeremy as he receives the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in Santa Ana, California on May 13, 2021.
"It is pretty clear to me that the benefits do outweigh the risk when I hear about children who are being put in the ICU, who are having long term outcomes after their Covid, and children are dying," said Amanda Cohn of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention , who voted yes. Earlier, top FDA vaccine scientist Peter Marks said younger children were "far from being spared harm of Covid-19," adding that, in this group, there had been 1.9 million infections and 8,300 hospitalisations, roughly a third of which required intensive care.Rare side-effects
If community transmission was brought down to very low levels, this may change –– but even then vaccination might be worthwhile because of long term risks linked to non-hospitalized cases, she added. There were no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis , but experts agreed there were not enough study volunteers to be able to detect highly rare side-effects.
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