CDC Signs Off on Pfizer Vaccine for Kids Aged 5-11

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday backed the emergency use of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine among kids ages 5-11.

First, the CDC's vaccine advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend the approval. Hours later, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky signed off on the recommendation, essentially opening the floodgates of vaccination for 28 million of the country's youngest citizens.

"Together, with science leading the charge, we have taken another important step forward in our nation's fight against the virus that causes COVID-19," Walensky says in a statement. "We know millions of parents are eager to get their children vaccinated and with this decision, we now have recommended that about 28 million children receive a COVID-19 vaccine.”

Earlier in the day, Walensky delivered a similar message to the CDC advisory panel.

"Today is a monumental day in the course of this pandemic and one that many of us have been very eager to see ever since your vote … recommending COVID-19 vaccination for those 16 and older," Walensky told advisers.

"There are children in the second grade who have never experienced a 'normal' school year," Walensky told the panel. "There are students in middle school who missed out on school sports and extracurricular activities. There are missed proms and homecoming dances … Pediatric vaccination has the power to help us change all of that."

One panel member said eight of her nine grandchildren would be vaccinated by next week.

"We have one more vaccine that saves lives of children and we should be very confident to employ it," Sarah Long, a professor of pediatrics at Drexel University, said during the meeting.

The agency's approval mirrors the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval on Friday for the emergency use of a smaller dose of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine for children in this age group.

These youngest Americans can now receive one-third of the

adult dose, with two injections given three weeks apart.

"As a mother and a physician, I know that parents, caregivers, school staff and children have been waiting for today's authorization. Vaccinating younger children against COVID-19 will bring us closer to returning to a sense of normalcy," Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock says in an agency statement announcing the approval on Friday. "Our comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of the data pertaining to the vaccine's safety and effectiveness should help assure parents and guardians that this vaccine meets our high standards."

At the time, infectious disease experts welcomed the approval.

"It's an incredibly important tool in the return to normalcy," Dr. Larry Corey, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and a leader of the COVID-19 Prevention Network, tells the New York Times. "To be able to know that your child is protected and not going to get severely ill by going to school is an incredible psychological relief."

The panel’s tough decision

Earlier last week, the FDA's vaccine advisory panel voted to recommend the approval. The vote was nearly unanimous at 17-0, with one abstention.

Despite the vote count, some panel members noted at the time that they struggled with the decision.

"This is a much tougher one, I think, than we had expected coming into it," panel member Dr. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, said during the meeting. "The data shows that the vaccine works and it's pretty safe ... [yet] we're worried about a side effect that we can't measure yet," he said, referring to a heart condition called myocarditis that has cropped up in rare cases in some younger recipients of COVID vaccines.

Another panel member questioned whether the vaccinations were needed at all for these youngest Americans.

"It just seems to me that in some ways, we're vaccinating children to protect the adults, and it should be the other way around," committee member Dr. James Hildreth, president and CEO of Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, tells NBC. "I do believe that children at highest risk do need to be vaccinated. But

vaccinating all of the children ... that seems a bit ... much for me."

Panel member Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine researcher at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, says, "It's always nerve-racking, I think, when you're asked to make a decision for millions of children based on studies of only a few thousand children."

The importance of the vaccine for kids

But he stressed that the potential threat from a pediatric infection with COVID-19 is real.

"The question is, when do you know enough?" Offit adds. "And I think we certainly know that there are many children between 5 and 11 years of age who are susceptible to this disease who could very well be sick and are hospitalized or die from it."

In fact, more than 1.9 million children aged 5 to 11 have tested positive for the coronavirus over the course of the pandemic, and more than 8,400 have been hospitalized, Dr. Fiona Havers, a medical officer with the CDC shares. And when hospitalized with COVID-19, children are more likely to be admitted to the intensive care and more likely to need a ventilator than children hospitalized with the flu are, she adds.

Children who contract COVID-19 are also at risk for a rare inflammatory condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C). As of Oct. 4, more than 5,200 children of all ages have developed MIS-C, and 46 have died, Havers says, adding that the condition was most common in younger children.

How will the vaccine be administered?

Now, the Biden administration's plans to roll out the vaccine through pediatricians' offices, community clinics and pharmacies will begin, as U.S. health officials hope to reassure hesitant parents that the jab will protect their kids from COVID-19.

More than 25,000 pediatric and family doctor clinics will provide vaccinations to children, along with tens of thousands of pharmacies, children's hospitals and community health centers, according to the White House plan.

"Our planning efforts mean that we will be ready to begin getting shots in arms in the days following a final CDC recommendation," a White House statement on the plan says.

The federal government has already bought enough vaccine to fully cover all 28 million American kids aged 5 to 11, and it will be distributed in smaller packages of about 100 doses each, to make things more manageable for doctors' offices and community health centers, the White House adds.

If you have questions about the vaccine, you should talk with your child’s pediatrician, school nurse or local pharmacist to learn more.