February 18, 2023 – A brand new study shows that Pfizer’s vaccine is protected and highly effective against COVID-19 in children 6 months and older.
A triple dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was 73% effective in stopping symptomatic COVID-19 illness in children ages 6 months to 4 years, researchers found. They also noted that an examination of the reactions and safety outcomes “did not raise concerns.”
The studypublished on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicineincluded 1,776 children aged 6 months to 2 years and a pair of,750 children aged 2 to 4 years. The children were randomly assigned to receive either the three-dose series of the Pfizer vaccine or placebo vaccinations. Participants received the primary dose of the vaccine by March 31, 2022 and lived in Brazil, Finland, Poland, Spain, or the United States
The authors write that protected and effective COVID vaccines are essential for young children to guard them from hospitalization or death, and since young children play a task within the spread of highly contagious variants of the virus. COVID hospitalizations amongst children under 5 peaked in January 2022 at 14.5 per 100,000, the authors wrote, noting that the Omicron virus variant appeared to affect young children more severely than the previous Delta variant.
When researchers evaluated the vaccine's effectiveness by age group, they found that it prevented symptomatic COVID disease in 75.8% of kids ages 6 months to 2 years and 71.8% of kids ages 2 to 4 years.
Less than 0.5% of participants reported severe reactions to the vaccine. The mostly reported reactions were tenderness or pain. The reactions typically occurred throughout the first few days after receiving the vaccine and resolved inside two days. No cases of inflammation of the center muscle or its lining were reported in participants.
Uptake of COVID vaccines amongst young children within the United States has been lower than amongst other age groups. CDC According to the study, 10% of kids under 5 years of age have received at the least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 5% have accomplished primary immunization.