DATA WELCOMED
According to the new data, 1,678 children received the third dose at least two months after the second dose, at a time when Omicron was the predominant variant.
An analysis of a subset of participants showed antibody levels were similar to 16-year-olds to 25-year-olds who were given the full strength vaccine at two doses.
No new adverse events were identified, and the majority of side effects were mild or moderate.
“Three doses of (Pfizer’s) COVID-19 vaccine appear to be very safe and highly effective in preventing not only severe disease, hospitalisation, and death from COVID-19, but even symptomatic COVID-19 at a time when Omicron was the dominant variant,” Celine Gounder, editor-at-large for public health at Kaiser Health News told AFP.
“However, we know that protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection and milder symptomatic disease wanes over time,” added Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist.
“Pfizer is reporting follow-up data only out to seven days after the third dose of vaccine. It’s too early to say how the three-dose series would perform out to several months or a year.”
Jeremy Faust, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine, told AFP: “My first impression is very positive. These numbers are exactly the kinds of signals we wanted to see.”
“I wish the two-dose series had worked for Pfizer/BioNTech. It didn’t. But the three-dose series appears to have given these very young children the protection we want them to have,” the doctor added.
If and when both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are authorised, US parents will have to consider whether they want their children to receive Moderna’s two-dose vaccine – which will offer faster protection – or Pfizer’s three doses – which will take longer to be effective but may ultimately be more protective.
Pfizer’s announcement comes one week after US health authorities gave the green light for the company’s COVID-19 booster shots to be administered to children aged five to 11.
Severe disease from COVID-19 is very rare among under-fives but can occur, with 477 US deaths in this age group since the start of the pandemic, or about 0.1 per cent of all deaths.
Children can also contract a rare post-viral condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), which has affected some 8,210 US children and killed 68.
Like adults, some children who get COVID-19 may go on to develop long COVID-19 with new, ongoing or returning symptoms, including brain fog and fatigue.
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