The United States has approved the Pfizer/BionNTech vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 as it proceeds quickly to the next stage of its vaccine launch.
As soon as the news was made, hospitals, schools, and clinics around the country were ready to start giving vaccines to children.
With special kid-sized needles, the children will be given one-third of a normal dose.
They will be given two of these smaller doses, three weeks apart, and then have to wait another two weeks for full protection.
The vaccine was proven to be about 91 percent effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 infections in a Pfizer study of 2,268 children.
The US Food and Drug Administration examined 3,100 vaccinated kids in concluding the shots are safe.
Top government medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said recently the Delta variant meant children infected and transmit “just as readily as adults do” when justifying the need to vaccinate a group who are rarely severely affected by Covid-19.
Since the beginning of the epidemic in the United States, at least 94 children aged 5 to 11 have died from Covid-19, over 8,300 have been hospitalized, and over 5,000 have developed a dangerous inflammatory illness connected to the coronavirus.
Covid-19 has claimed the lives of about 750,000 people in the United States.
The announcement of the approval will likely be of interest to governments around the world who have only approved the jab for people aged 12 and over.
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