COVID Vaccines for Kids Under 5 Could be Available in June, FDA Official Says

An official with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that coronavirus vaccines for children under the age of 5 will be considered — and likely approved — as soon as June.

Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, suggested that the vaccines will be available shortly in an interview published on Friday in The Washington Post.

Moderna has so far submitted a request to emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine version for children aged 6 months to 4. Pfizer, BioNTech and others have indicated that they will submit the request within the next few week.

The FDA plans to meet outside advisers to discuss both vaccine versions on June 8-21 and 22. The Post reported. Review will not be slowed down due to other vaccine regimens being considered. as one report from Politico had suggested.

“We are not going to delay things unnecessarily here. This whole concept of delaying is not something we will be doing,” Marks said in the interview.

Once the agency has met with its advisers, the vaccines could be approved within the same month, Marks added, stating that the agency “would anticipate June authorizations for one or more of the pediatric vaccinations.”

Vaccines for children aged 5 years and older have been given emergency use authorization. parents with younger children have struggled with what to doBecause of this, many people without vaccines are now more likely to get infected because their mask requirements have been relaxed.

Attention should be paid to younger children. The mortality rate for children under 5 is much lower than it is for others, but not nonexistent — indeed, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics, hundreds of children under the age of 4 have died from COVIDSince the pandemic started.

Many children have also suffered from long-term effects after contracting coronavirus, a condition that is commonly known as “long COVID.” Symptoms range in severity from person to person, but it’s been established that children with long COVID can suffer from symptoms that are just as debilitating as those faced by adults.

“With long COVID, many kids suddenly find themselves struggling to keep up with their schoolwork or skipping sports,” an assessment from Yale Medicine says. “Others can’t sleep or have difficulty walking, while yet others struggle with aches and pains, breathlessness, dizziness, and other troubling symptoms.”

Experts also warn that there is not enough research on long COVID in children to determine just how widespread it is, though in the United Kingdom, it’s estimated that around 44,000 kids have the condition.

Research has foundGetting vaccinated is one of the best ways you can prevent or reduce the symptoms of long COVID.