ACIP Recommends COVID-19 Vaccines for Children Aged ≥6 Months

WEDNESDAY, June 29, 2022 (HealthDay News) — In the June 28 early-release issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, interim recommendations are presented for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for young children aged 6 months to 5 years.

Katherine E. Fleming-Dutra, M.D., from the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues provide the interim recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for use of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 6 months to 5 years.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued Emergency Use Authorization amendments for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for use in children on June 17, 2022. On June 18, 2022, the ACIP issued separate interim recommendations for use of these vaccines for COVID-19 prevention. The authors note that both vaccines met the criteria for immunobridging, which is the comparison of postvaccination neutralizing antibody levels in young children with those in young adults in whom efficacy has been shown. The ACIP recommendations for use of Moderna vaccine in children aged 6 months to 5 years and for use of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 6 months to 4 years are interim and will be updated.

“ACIP determined that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the known and potential risks, even in the setting of high seroprevalence among young children,” the authors write. “Children may receive any ACIP-recommended COVID-19 vaccine and are encouraged to receive the earliest vaccine available to them.”