Pfizer Plans to Seek Booster Approval for 16- and 17-Year-Olds

Nov. 30, 2021 -- Pfizer and BioNTech program to use for FDA authorization this week for a booster COVID-19 vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds.

“We expect to stock updates connected this soon,” Kit Longley, a Pfizer spokesman, told The Washington Post.

The FDA could authorize the other dose wrong a week. If approved, the further changeable would beryllium the archetypal booster approved for those nether property 18.

“Given the existent wide concern of the pandemic, FDA volition measure immoderate specified [emergency usage authorization] petition successful a precise timely manner,” the bureau told the newspaper.

As countries astir the satellite determination to code the caller Omicron variant, wellness officials person called connected radical to get vaccinated -- and for afloat vaccinated radical to get their booster shots. On Monday, President Joe Biden called the vaccines “the champion extortion against this caller variant oregon immoderate of the variants retired there.”

The Omicron variant hasn’t yet been detected successful the U.S., though Biden medication officials person said successful caller days that it’s expected to dispersed astir the globe. As of Tuesday morning, 14 countries had reported much than 180 cases to GISAID, a planetary database for the genomic sequencing of viruses.

Federal regulators person cited caller information from Israel connected booster shots arsenic reassurance for authorizing booster doses for 16- and 17-year-olds, the paper reported. The studies person shown that superior broadside effects for younger radical person been uncommon and mild.

Extending the property scope for booster shots “before Omicron hits tin perchance assistance and surely won’t hurt,” Jeanne Marrazzo, MD, an infectious illness doc astatine the University of Alabama astatine Birmingham, told the Post.

On Nov. 19, the FDA authorized booster shots of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for radical ages 18 and older. All adults who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine are besides eligible for a booster.