Mohamed Bughrara

The US Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old on Friday, June 17th.

The FDA expanded the use of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine’s emergency use authorization (EUA) to encompass individuals aged 6 months to 17 years old. The FDA revised the EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to allow it to be used in children aged 6 months to 4 years. The vaccine was already approved for use in children and adults aged 5 and up.

The approval of the Moderna vaccine was based on the results of two ongoing, randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trials in the United States and Canada that recruited infants, children, and adolescents. In these FDA studies, the immune responses of both age groups of children to the vaccine were comparable to the immunological responses of adults.

The state of Wisconsin had over 1.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases with over 13,000 deaths. Over 3.7 million Wisconsin residents had at least one dose of vaccines. 

There’s been a lot of hesitancy from some parents towards the vaccine for their children. Please make sure to visit the American Academy of Pediatrics as they recently published COVID19 Vaccines in infants, children and Adolescents and consult your pediatrician.