Prof. Mosialos – What applies to the vaccination of children 5 to 11 years old

Professor of Health Policy at LSE Elias Mosialos wrote on the approval of the coronavirus vaccine for children and specifically for the ages of 5 to 11 years, the , by posting an extended message on his personal Facebook account.

Prof. Mosialos refers to the clinical trials that were carried out until the licensing of vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 years.

"So the first COVID vaccine approved is the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine based on the results of a randomized controlled trial that evaluated safety and immune responses. (A separate Moderna clinical trial is being considered separately.)

The Pfizer / BioNTech clinical trial initially compared three doses: 30 micrograms (the adult dose), 20 micrograms and 10 micrograms. This first part of the test showed that the 10-microgram dose, the smallest dose corresponding to one-third of the adult dose, had the fewest side effects. At the same time, the vaccine continued to produce strong immune responses at higher doses. In the next part of the trial, more than 2,200 children aged 5 to 11 were randomly assigned to receive either a 10 microgram dose of the vaccine (two-thirds of the participants) or a placebo (one-third of the participants). They all did two doses three weeks apart. "The children who received the vaccine had similar immune responses as the young people aged 16 to 25 who had received 2 doses of 30 micrograms", says Elias Mosialos

And he goes on to analyze the data:

When Pfizer submitted the data to the FDA for approval, there were not many cases of symptomatic COVID-19 infections in test participants, and estimates showed that the vaccine was as effective as 90 percent. The tests also confirmed that the infections were caused by the Delta variant, which is widely present in...