Children in the US will “hopefully” start vaccinating against Covid-19 by late spring or early summer, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday.
Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke at a Coronavirus briefing in the White House, an event that was reinstated by the new president after he spent the last months of the Trump administration has fallen away.
“Hopefully we will be able to vaccinate children by late spring and early summer,” Fauci said.
Covid-19 vaccines have not yet been approved for children. Supplies for adults and the logistics to deliver shots are many challenges for manufacturers, the government and state governments. As of Thursday, only about 1.3% of Americans have received the required two doses of vaccines currently available.
But vaccination of children is a major step in the pursuit of widespread immunity against a virus that has infected nearly 26 million people in the United States and killed more than 433,000 people. For the U.S. to achieve “herd immunity,” or widespread resistance, approximately 70% to 85% of the population must be vaccinated. Children make up about 25% of the population.
‘Children tend not to get as badly ill as adults [from Covid-19] but they can still get sick and some are tragically dead, ‘Dr Leana Wen, a public health expert, told the Associated Press. “Children can also be transmission vectors, and getting children vaccinated is important.”
The federal Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved vaccines for children, due to insufficient test data. Fauci said data is collected through a process called ‘age de-escalation testing’. The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine has received emergency approval for use in people 16 years of age and older. The next step, Fauci said, involves testing in children up to 12 years old. If successful, it will be followed by another test round up to nine years old.
Since tens of thousands of people are taking the initial tests to confirm the safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, age-related tests can be done on children with smaller groups.
“You do not want to undergo an efficiency test involving tens of thousands of children,” Fauci said. “What you can do is in a much smaller trial, measured in hundreds to several thousands … which we call safety and … immunogenicity.”
It is a term for whether the vaccine can successfully elicit an immune system response.
After a frustratingly slow start, the US gives about 1 million shots a day to adults, although the rate is still considered inadequate. The Biden government set a target of 100m shots in the first 100 days and the president talked about achieving 1.5m shots per day.
“We’re going to make sure everyone has enough,” Biden told veterans at the hospital near Washington on Friday. “We are going to increase supply nationwide.”
Two more vaccines from US companies are approaching FDA approval. One from Johnson & Johnson needs a single shot.
Biden also set a goal of reopening most schools by the summer, and has urged government agencies to work with communities to promote it.
His U.S. rescue plan legislation in Congress is asking for $ 50 billion to fund a major expansion of testing, which is considered essential for the safe reopening of schools and businesses. Robust testing can detect outbreaks before they spread and cause leaks. Under Donald Trump, the test in the US had a chaotic start. Experts believe that it is still less in many parts of the country.