US health authorities on Monday authorized a booster of Pfizer’s vaccine for 12-15 year olds, and reduced from six to five months the time before the injection of this third dose, for all age groups.
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These decisions come at the height of the epidemic in the country, linked to the Omicron variant, and when schoolchildren are preparing to return to class after the end of year holidays.
The US Medicines Agency (FDA) has also authorized a booster dose of Pfizer-BioNtech’s vaccine for immunocompromised children between the ages of 5 and 11. These are, for example, those who have received an organ transplant.
The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) have yet to endorse this decision.
The FDA said it was relying in particular on data from Israel, where thousands of children and adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15 have already received this booster dose.
In addition, out of more than 4.1 million people aged 16 and over who received a booster there only five months after the first two injections, no “new safety problem” was raised, a also argued the FDA.
“Allowing the vaccination with a booster after five months instead of six may provide better protection earlier against the highly contagious Omicron variant,” the agency wrote in a statement.
She also specified that she was looking at the cases of other vaccines.
The United States currently averages about 400,000 new cases of COVID-19 each day, the highest since the start of the pandemic, according to benchmark figures from Johns Hopkins University.
Hospitalizations are also on the rise, but not at the same rate, and for the moment remain below the peak recorded a year ago.
Hospitalizations of children sick with COVID-19 are also on the rise, with vaccination rates notably lower among the youngest.
However, the authorities want schools to remain as open as possible.
“We are aware that there may be difficulties” for this start of the school year, US Minister of Education Miguel Cardona said on Sunday. But the goal is to maintain “full-time face-to-face learning”, with students having already “suffered enough”, he said.
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