CDC Advisers Consider Covid-19 Boosters for 5- to 11-Year-Olds

The Food and Drug Administration earlier this week cleared the third Pfizer-BioNTech shot for the school-age children, to be given five months after the second dose. The extra dose is one-third the amount that those age 12 and older receive.

Until that authorization, boosters were cleared only for adults and teenagers.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which includes pediatricians, infectious-disease experts and other medical experts, is one of the final checkpoints before many pharmacies, doctor’s offices and other vaccination sites will start administering them. The CDC usually adopts its recommendations.

Covid-19 has generally been less severe for children than adults, though higher rates of children were hospitalized during the Omicron wave than during earlier periods of the pandemic.

The advisory group is expected to consider studies evaluating whether the booster shots are safe and effective, then decide whether to recommend them and if so, how strongly.

The decisions related to children are more complicated than earlier choices related to adults, because children have low risks of severe Covid-19 but not zero risk, panel member Dr.

Camille Kotton

said.

“Clearly someone who is 100 years old who is at high risk for severe deadly Covid, there’s a different risk-benefit equation,” she said.

Panel members are also expected to discuss any potential risks of rare heart conditions including myocarditis that have been associated with messenger RNA vaccines such as Pfizer-BioNTech’s, especially in teenage boys and young men.

Health authorities, however, say the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks of the inflammatory heart conditions. Researchers have found the risk of developing the conditions is higher with Covid-19 than after getting vaccinated.

At its meeting, the panel may also review timing of the booster shots. Members may discuss whether to recommend children get the boosters immediately, or at the same time as flu shots in the fall.

“Vaccine fatigue is clearly part of the issue,” said

William Schaffner,

a nonvoting liaison member of the panel and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “There are still many, many children who have been recommended to receive the initial vaccination series who haven’t received it.”

About 28% of 5- to 11-year-olds in the U.S. received both initial doses of a Covid-19 vaccine as of May 11, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The FDA signed off on the booster based on safety data in 400 children showing that the most common side effects were pain and swelling in the injection site, as well as fatigue, headache, muscle pain, chills or fever.

Testing also found that the booster shot generated a strong immune response to the virus, including significantly increased antibody levels against Omicron, according to Pfizer and BioNTech.

Write to Liz Essley Whyte at [email protected]