US authorizes Pfizer Covid vaccine for children 5-11

Aiden Arthurs receives the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine from Pharmacist Andrew Mac (R) at the Jewish Federation/JARC's offices in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

The United States on Friday authorized the Pfizer Covid vaccine for children aged five-to-11, paving the way for 28 million young Americans to soon get immunized.

The decision came after a high-level medical panel advising the government this week endorsed the shots, ruling that the known benefits outweighed the risks of side-effects.

"Vaccinating younger children against Covid-19 will bring us closer to returning to a sense of normalcy."

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced this week the US government had bought 50 million more doses as it works to protect children, including eventually those under five.

The vaccine's safety was also studied in more than 3,000 children, and no serious side effects have been detected in the ongoing study.

Severe Covid is rarer in children than adults, but far from non-existent.

There have also been more than 5,000 pediatric cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a rare but highly serious post-viral complication, including 46 deaths.

Health authorities will continue to monitor for potentially highly rare side-effects, such as myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation and inflammation around the heart).

In male teens and young adults, the most affected group the effects occur mostly after the second dose of an mRNA vaccine at a rate of a few dozens per million. Most of the cases have fully resolved.

Beyond protecting childrens' own health, epidemiologists think vaccinating this group will help bring an end to disruptions to school and other activities.

Instead, the decision whether to get vaccinated should depend on factors such as the child's risk factors and should be left to families, they said.

Almost 58 percent of the total population is now fully vaccinated.

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