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The advisers of vaccines of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted 17 in favor, 0 against and an abstention vote on Tuesday to recommend the vaccine Covid- 19 from Pfizer in children from 5 to 11 years.
Members of the Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biologicals of the FDA agreed that the benefits of vaccinating younger children appeared to outweigh the risks , but some members were concerned about voting to vaccinate a large population of younger children based on studies of a few thousand.
But Dr. Amanda Cohn of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reminded the committee that children have died of Covid – 19, according to CNN. According to the CDC, more than 700 children under 18 years have died of Covid- 19. “We don’t want children to die from Covid,” Cohn said. “And we don’t want children in the ICU.”
Now, the FDA will have to issue its own decision on this, which is expected around November 1 , and later the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will have to scrutinize the immunization of this age group.
The CDC’s own advisory committee is scheduled to meet on November 2-3 to review data from the vaccine from Pfizer for children ages 5 and 11 years, before the director of that agency, Dr. Rochelle Walenksy, had the last word in this regard.
During Tuesday’s session, expert Hong Yang, Risk-Benefit Assessment Advisor for the FDA Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, spoke of several possible scenarios about the evolution of the pandemic.
In all cases, the benefits of immunizing children “clearly” outweigh the risks, said Yang, citing myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, as one of the possible dangers.
On this issue, the expert indicated that, although There is a theoretical risk of myocarditis in boys and it is more present in those vaccinated, especially in young men , the benefits of immunization seem to continue being “strong.”
A CDC pediatrician, Matthew Oster, who also spoke at the committee meeting, noted that they have not detected major rates of myocarditis caused by vaccines among children under 12 to 17 years.
In May, the US gave the green light to vaccine C Pfizer’s ovid for teens from 12 years and older.
Oster explained that myocarditis can occur in children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome caused by Covid – 19 .
According to the CDC, although it is unknown what exactly causes this syndrome in the one that various parts of the body become inflamed, it is known that in many cases it occurs in children who had Covid – 19 or who were close to a positive for the disease.
CDC tracked 5 cases, 000 children with this syndrome related to Covid – 19 and, according to Oster, the agency “has not yet seen any sign” that connect with the goes cribs.
Specifically, the CDC identified 24 volunteers who had been immunized before contracting the syndrome, of which 18 had been infected with Covid – 19 .
“We have not seen high rates of MIS-C (as this myocarditis is known) associated with vaccines in infants and older children, ”said Oster.
With information from EFE