US CDC panel recommends Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine for 12-15 age group

An advisory panel of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday (local time) recommended the use of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged between 12 and 15.

The 14-0 vote, with one recusal from the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was part of the final process before the shot becomes widely available to the younger population, reported The Hill.

Once CDC Director Rochelle Walensky signs off on the panel's recommendation, vaccinations will begin in most states, although some clinics in states including Pennsylvania, Maine and Georgia did not wait, it further said.

This comes after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorised the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to children in the age group of 12-15 years.

Amending the Emergency Use Approval (EUA) issued on December 11, 2020, for administration in individuals above the age of 16, FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said: "The FDA's expansion of the emergency use authorisation for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to include adolescents 12 through 15 years of age is a significant step in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic."

"Today's action allows for a younger population to be protected from COVID-19, bringing us closer to returning to a sense of normalcy and to ending the pandemic. Parents and guardians can rest assured that the agency undertook a rigorous and thorough review of all available data, as we have with all of our COVID-19 vaccine emergency use authorisations," she added.

Since December last year, companies have delivered more than 170 million doses of the vaccine across the US.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was also determined to be more than 91 per cent effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 at least six months after the second dose.

A recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed limited eagerness for parents to get their children vaccinated, and that parents' views on inoculating their children lined up with whether they planned to get vaccinated themselves, The Hill reported.

Only 30 per cent of parents with kids ages 12 to 15 said they'll get their child vaccinated right away, 26 per cent wanted to wait to see how it's working, 18 per cent said they will vaccinate only if their child's school requires it and 23 per cent said they will definitely not get their child vaccinated.