The COVID-19 vaccine can already be rolled out to children in the spring, said dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday.
The country’s leading expert on infectious diseases said trials will begin somewhere in the next few months to test the effectiveness of the vaccines among the youngest population in the country.
“By the end of spring, early summer, we will hopefully be able to be vaccinated according to the FDA’s guidance,” Fauci (insert) said during a White House COVID-19 briefing.
Fauci described the upcoming trials as a test of aging, allowing researchers to analyze the effectiveness of the vaccine among a smaller group of children – “hundreds to several thousands,” he said.
These results are then compared to the larger trials of tens of thousands of people conducted by Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech.
‘If you can show that it’s safe and that it’s actually causing the reaction that reflects the protection – mainly the link between immunity – what you can do is bridge it to the effectiveness data you got from the 30,000.[-person] trial with Moderna and the 44,000[-person] trial we did with Pfizer, ”Fauci explained.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pointed to recent school data to reiterate that children have reduced the transmission of COVID-19.
Pfizer’s vaccine is currently approved for ages 16 and older, while Moderna’s are approved for adults 18 and older. Both vaccines – the only ones approved so far in the US – require two doses a week apart.
Fauci said earlier that it could take “months” before children are protected from the deadly bug.
He noted that ‘the reason is that traditionally when you have a situation like a new vaccine, you want to make sure, because children as well as pregnant women are vulnerable, so before you put it in the children, you want to make sure “Make sure you have a degree of efficiency and security that is established in an adult population, especially an adult, normal population,” Fauci told NBC anchor Chuck Todd, “Meet the Press.”
In December, Moderna said it would begin testing its vaccination on 3,000 children aged 12 to 17.