The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized this Tuesday the use of a booster dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine against covid-19 for children between 5 and 11 years of age.
“Although it is true that covid-19 is usually less severe in children than in adults, the omicron wave has caused more children to get sick and be hospitalized”FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf said in a statement.
The doctor also recalled that some of these Children can suffer long-term effects, even if they have not had very severe symptoms when infected with covid-19.
The authorization is based on a study of the immune response of a group of children in October 2021, which resulted in the full use of Pfizer’s vaccine for this age group.
At the beginning of the year, the FDA authorized the booster dose for young people between 12 and 15 years of age; however, children under 5 years of age cannot yet be vaccinated against covid-19.
Although Johns Hopkins University maintains the figure at 999,842, the US government already considered that number exceeded last Thursday.
“As a nation, we must not become numb to pain. To heal, we must remember,” US President Joe Biden said at the time.