Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective in preventing symptomatic forms of the disease in children between the ages of 5 and 11, the company said in a paper released Friday.
This new information was released on the website of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which convened a meeting of an independent expert advisory panel on Tuesday to decide whether to authorize the vaccine in this age group.
The analysis was based on about 2,250 participants with data accumulated through Oct. 8, with most of the positive cases occurring when the delta variant of the coronavirus was dominant in the United States and the world.
“The efficacy of the laboratory-confirmed symptomatic COVID-19 vaccine at least 7 days after dose 2 in evaluable participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection was 90.7%,” the paper states.
There were no cases of severe COVID or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a rare but serious postviral condition.
Read: EU authorizes combining Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines as COVID boosters
There were no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of the heart or around the heart), but there are not enough volunteers in the study to be able to detect very rare side effects, and male adolescents are thought to be a higher risk group.
It’s the first time Pfizer has released an estimate of the efficacy of its covid vaccine in young children. Their previous report only indicated that the drug produced a robust immune response.
The vaccine was tested at a dose of 10 micrograms, while older age groups have received 30 micrograms.
President Joe Biden’s administration has said it is ready to launch the vaccination campaign for the country’s 28 million children ages 5 to 11 as soon as the vaccine is licensed by scientific agencies.
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