The health authorities of U.S on Monday, January 3, they authorized the booster of Pfizer’s anti-COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 15 years, and reduced the time before the injection of this third dose for all ages from six to five months.
The decision has been made in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak due to the omicron variant and when schoolchildren are preparing to return to classes after the end of the year holidays.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also authorized a booster dose of the vaccine Pfizer-BioNtech for immunosuppressed children between the ages of 5 and 11. For example, for those who have received an organ transplant.
The decision has yet to be endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The FDA It claims to be based on data from Israel, where thousands of children and adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15 have already received the booster dose.
In addition, in more than 4.1 million people 16 years of age or older who received a booster in that country five months after the first two doses, no “new safety problem” has been registered, said the FDA.
“Allowing vaccination with a booster after five months instead of six may provide better protection against the highly contagious variant of omicron” the agency wrote in a statement.
It also specified that it examines the cases of other vaccines.
The United States currently has an average of about 400,000 new cases of COVID-19 every day, a record since the start of the pandemic, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
Hospitalizations are also increasing, but for the moment they remain below the peak recorded a year ago. Likewise, the income of sick children from the COVID-19.
But nevertheless, the authorities want the schools to remain open as much as possible. “We are aware that there may be difficulties” for the return to the classroom, said this Sunday the Secretary of Education of the United States, Miguel Cardona. But the goal is to maintain “full-time face-to-face learning,” because the students have already “suffered enough,” he said.
Source-larepublica.pe