plummeted to 12 percent from 68 percent in younger children.
The effect of different dosages
The numbers change dramatically between ages 11 and 12. During the week ending Jan. 30, the vaccine’s effectiveness against infection was 67 percent in 12-year-olds, but just 11 percent in 11-year-old children, the study found.
“The difference between the two age groups is striking,” Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told the Times.
The difference may be due to dosage: While 12-year-old children got 30 micrograms of the vaccine — the same dose given to adults — children who were 11 and younger received only 10 micrograms, he notes.
“This is super interesting because it would almost suggest that it’s the dose that makes the difference,” he adds. “The question is how to fix that.”
Just days ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new recommendations that would allow the majority of Americans to stop wearing masks, including in schools.
RELATED: CDC Loosens Mask Guidelines as Omicron Surge Subsides
The new data also raises important questions about the Biden administration’s strategy for vaccinating younger children. Only about one in four children aged 5 to 11 have received two doses of the vaccine. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had already postponed an expert panel meeting to weigh two doses of the vaccine for children under 5 after Pfizer submitted more data suggesting two doses were not strongly protective against the Omicron variant.
Importantly, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson are all testing Omicron-specific versions of their vaccines.
Many parents want to vaccinate their children to prevent them from spreading the virus to vulnerable relatives, to keep them in school, or to avoid the possibility of long COVID. Experts acknowledged that the latest data does little to ease those concerns.
Still, the vaccines “provide more protection than we think,” Jessica Andriesen, a vaccine data expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told the Times. “They may also make it so that your kid who brings home COVID isn’t shedding virus as much as they would be if they weren’t vaccinated, and they also may have it for a shorter amount of time.”
For more information about COVID vaccines for children, visit the CDC.