The COVID-19 vaccine can be given to children starting in the spring, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday.
The top national infectious disease expert said studies would begin sometime in the next few months to test the effectiveness of vaccines among the country’s youngest population.
“We hope that by the end of spring, early summer, we will have children who can be vaccinated in accordance with FDA guidelines,” Fauci (insert) said during a COVID-19 briefing at the White House.
Fauci described future studies as “age-lowering tests,” which will allow researchers to look at the effectiveness of the vaccine among a smaller group of children – “hundreds to thousands”, he said.
These results are then compared with larger studies conducted by tens of thousands of people by Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech.
“If you can show that it is safe and that it actually induces the type of response that reflects protection – mainly the correlation of immunity – what you can do is connect to the efficacy data that you have obtained from the 30,000[-person] trial with Moderna and the 44,000[-person] process that I did with Pfizer, “Fauci explained.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, highlighted recent school data to reiterate that children have decreased COVID-19 transmissibility rates.
Currently, the Pfizer vaccine is licensed for those aged 16 and over, while Moderna is approved for adults 18 and older. Both vaccines – the only ones approved for use in the US so far – require two doses a week apart.
Fauci previously said it could take “months” before the children begin to be protected from the deadly insect.
He mentioned that “the reason is traditionally when you have a situation like a new vaccine, you want to make sure because children, as well as pregnant women, are vulnerable, so before you put it in children, you want to make sure you have a degree of effectiveness and safety that is established in an adult population, especially a normal adult population, “Fauci told NBC presenter Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.
In December, Moderna said it would begin testing the vaccine on 3,000 children between the ages of 12 and 17.