Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Safe For 12 To 15-Year-Olds, Claims Company

Pfizer has just announced that its COVID-19 vaccine was completely safe and effective for use for adolescents from ages 12 to 15, after it successfully completed the Phase III clinical trial. This announcement was made by the pharmaceutical giant via a press release yesterday.

Reuters

The trial involved 2,260 kids from the aforementioned age group, from which 1,131 were vaccinated whereas 1,129 were given a placebo. During the trials, there were 18 cases of symptomatic novel coronavirus -- all from the placebo group. The company saw the vaccine showcased 100 percent efficacy.

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Pfizer has revealed that the vaccine was tolerated well in the age group and resulted in only the standard side-effects that were experienced by people from the age of 16 to 25 years. Researchers also saw that the vaccine was actually more effective in developing defensive immune responses in kids aged from 12 to 15 years compared to the 15-25 years group.

According to the researchers, the adolescents also produced higher levels of antibodies that took down the novel coronavirus. Researchers say that the adolescents had GMT (geometric mean titers) of 1,239 compared to just 705.1 found in the age group of 16-25 years.

It is important to note that this trial was conducted to understand the immune responses and more data will be needed to denote the overall efficacy. Moreover, the pharmaceutical companies have only released the trial results and the entire data is yet to be shared with the world and peer-reviewed.

Also Read: Why Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Is Better Than Pfizer, Moderna

Pfizer and BioNTech are now planning to submit the data to the American Food and Drug Administration as well as authorities in the European Union to enable use of the vaccine for the younger population.

Reuters

Albert Bourla, Pfizer¡¯s CEO, said in a statement, ¡°We share the urgency to expand the authorization of our vaccine to use in younger populations and are encouraged by the clinical trial data from adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15.¡±

He added, ¡°We plan to submit these data to FDA as a proposed amendment to our Emergency Use Authorization in the coming weeks and to other regulators around the world, with the hope of starting to vaccinate this age group before the start of the next school year.¡±