US FDA advisors meet to discuss Covid vax for kids under 5

Washington, June 16 (IANS) Advisors to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met to discuss amending emergency use authorizations (EUA) for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines for children under the age of five.

The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is scheduled to discuss amending the EUA of the Moderna vaccine to include the administration of the primary series to infants and children six months through five years of age, reports Xinhua news agency.

Children under five-years-old are the only group not yet eligible for Covid-19 vaccination in the US.

The committee will also discuss amending the EUA of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to cover infants and children six months through four years of age, according to the FDA.

On Tuesday, the committee unanimously voted to recommend Moderna's two-dose Covid-19 vaccine for children aged six through 17.

The development comes as some 88,000 child Covid-19 cases were reported across the US in the week ending June 9, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children's Hospital Association said in a report on Monday.

Over 13.5 million children have tested positive for Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, and nearly 395,000 of these cases have been added in the past four weeks.

About 5.6 million child Covid-19 cases have been added in 2022, said the report.

Child cases are far higher than the same time around mid-June one year ago.