On March 31, Pfizer released a statement regarding their most recent study involving 2,260 U.S. volunteers whose ages ranged from 12 years old to 15 years old. The study revealed that their COVID-19 vaccine is safe and very highly effective for children in that age range.
Prior to Pfizer’s first vaccine rollout, the COVID vaccine had only been tested on people ages 16 and up. According to Pfizer, preliminary data revealed that “there were no cases of COVID-19 among fully vaccinated adolescents compared to 18 among those given dummy shots,” KHOU reported.
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New Study Reveals Pfizer Vaccine is Highly Effective for Kids as Young as 12 Years Old
And although the study has not yet been published, it was also revealed that the vaccine greatly boosted the children’s immune systems. In fact, according to KHOU, researchers found even higher levels of virus-fighting antibodies in children than were seen in studies of young adults.
However, the side effects that young adults showed after receiving the second dose of the vaccine remained the same in the study among the 12- to 15-year-olds. Those side effects include “pain, fever, chills, and fatigue.” After the results of the initial study were revealed, Dr. Philip J. Landrigan of Boston College, although not involved in the study, called them “encouraging,” according to KHOU.
And while the study will continue to determine how the vaccine works in the longterm, Pfizer and BioNTech will bring their findings to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in order to get the vaccine approved to be used on the younger population. That could happen within the next couple of weeks.
“We share the urgency to expand the authorization of our vaccine to use in younger populations and are encouraged by the clinical trial data from adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement following the preliminary results of their study, according to CNN. “We plan to submit these data to FDA as a proposed amendment to our Emergency Use Authorization in the coming weeks and to other regulators around the world, with the hope of starting to vaccinate this age group before the start of the next school year.”
Since the promising results of this study, last week Pfizer began testing it on children ages 6 months to 11 years old.
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