Approval likely for inoculating younger children with Pfizer vaccine

THE HEALTH MINISTRY ANTICIPATES APPROVAL OF PFIZER VACCINE for
inoculating children younger than 12-years old during this year’s final quarter.
“We are looking at approvals probably coming from the US-FDA (United States Food and Drug
Administration) sometime later this month, by mid this month or by the end of this month,”
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony said during Thursday’s ‘COVID UPDATE’ a daily ministry
of health televised programme.
The German biotechnology company, BioNTech, predicted approval of emergency use of the
vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old was likely between September and December this year.
“They would probably grant emergency use authorisation for children between the ages of five
to 11. If that happens then we’ll be able to get the vaccine to children within this age category,
but until we get that, or we see that approval happening in the US, we will be confined more to
the 12 to under 18,” Anthony said.
He however urged parents to continue taking all necessary precautions and following COVID –
related protocols to help protect their offspring from contracting deadly disease.
“There are simple things that [we] have to make sure that children are properly masked up at
least in the public, you have to take those precautions like sanitising and social distancing. These
would help to reduce the chances of getting infected, if people take these simple measures, I
think it would help us greatly,” the minister said.
He continued: “Everybody’s got to be on board. Without everybody being on board and taking
this very seriously, we are going to see (more) infections (among) those children who would
have comorbidities, meaning they have some underlying illnesses.”

“Children with diabetic Type One and others with other types of conditions, those children
should take extra precautions, because they are vulnerable as it is, because of their underlying
conditions,” Anthony, a Cuban-trained medical specialist, counselled.
Pfizer Director, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, told US CNBC News recently that company data on its
vaccine trials for children in the five to 11 age group should be available and submitted to
the US -FDA this month.