(WXYZ) — Children as young as 5 will soon be eligible for a bivalent COVID-19 booster shot.
Both Pfizer and Moderna’s emergency use authorizations were amended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Wednesday. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still needs to give its stamp of approval before shots can be administered.
I’m pretty excited because this likely means two of my kids will be able to get an updated booster shot soon. Now, the new boosters target both the original strain of COVID-19 that first emerged in Wuhan, China plus omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.
Pfizer’s bivalent booster was authorized for kids between the ages of 5 and 11. It’s a 10-microgram dose. And Moderna’s bivalent booster was authorized for kids aged 6 through 17. When it comes to dosing, amounts vary based on age. Children ages 6 to 11 will get 25 micrograms. And kids 12 to 17 will get a 50-microgram dose.
Both Pfizer and Moderna shots will be given two months after the initial two-shot primary series or after a previous booster.
The FDA did authorize the new shots without direct human data on their effectiveness. But that doesn’t mean they blindly approved these boosters.
What they did was look at immune response and safety data from clinical studies involving kids who received the original vaccines as boosters. And they evaluated data from a clinical study where adults were given a bivalent COVID-19 booster shot similar to the one currently approved, except it targeted the BA.1 subvariant.
The FDA also considered real-world experience with the original vaccines, which have been given to millions of people, including young children.
Right now, omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 make up about 80% of the circulating virus in the U.S. With kids back in school classrooms and people returning to their pre-pandemic lives, the virus has plenty of opportunity to spread.
Now children overall may not be at high risk for severe disease, but kids have been hospitalized and some have died. Plus, they can experience long-term effects that impact their daily lives.
The bottom line is that getting children fully vaccinated and boosted not only protects them but also protects more vulnerable family members like grandma and grandpa. The hope with these new bivalent shots is that they provide durable, long-lasting protection because they’re targeting the current dominant strain.
Plus, a new analysis found if more people got their booster before the end of the year, roughly 90,000 deaths due to COVID-19 could be prevented this fall and winter.
Additional Coronavirus information and resources:
View a global coronavirus tracker with data from Johns Hopkins University.
See complete coverage on our Coronavirus Continuing Coverage page.
