FDA Approves Covid-19 Vaccine for Young Children
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The FDA on Friday authorized for emergency use the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines for children six months and older following its advisory panel’s unanimous recommendation.
After a review is conducted by the CDC, infants and toddlers, about 18 million people, will become eligible for the shots. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will give the final approval. The FDA also approved Moderna’s vaccine for school-aged children and teenagers, for whom only the Pfizer shots had previously been available.
During a Senate hearing Thursday, Walensky assured that her team was working over the federal holiday weekend to finalize the vaccine “because we understand the urgency of this for American parents.” Some politicians have kept up the pressure on the CDC to distribute the vaccine for the country’s youngest children even though they statistically are the least-at risk demographic for developing severe illness from the virus.
Walensky, however, claimed that there have been more pediatric deaths from COVID-19 this year than from the flu. “So I actually think we need to protect young children, as well as protect everyone with the vaccine and especially protect elders,” she said. The Biden administration pre-ordered millions of doses of the vaccine, which will likely be shipped across the country in the next couple of weeks.
In New York City, long after the mask and vaccine mandates for private businesses as well as K-12 schools were dropped for most age groups, Mayor Eric Adams maintained a mask requirement for toddlers in public daycare, even amid strong parental backlash. One New York City mom was fired from her city government job after she protested the ongoing toddler mask mandate at one of Adams’ press conferences.
Last week, after multiple extensions, Adams finally announced that the toddler mask mandate would be discontinued, “because we have followed the data, which shows that cases are steadily falling, we’ve beaten back the latest COVID-19 surge.”
