(We Chinese in America Media Editor Tang Zhao, January 21, 2022) The FDA could approve Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine as soon as next month for children between the ages of six months and five. White House chief anti-epidemic adviser Anthony Fauci said on the 19th that the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expects to approve Pfizer's new COVID vaccine as soon as next month for children aged six months to five years old. If the authorization is passed, the United States will become the youngest country in the world to approve the new Covid vaccine.

Pfizer is still testing its own vaccine on six-month-old infants and will soon file an authorization application with the authorities; the United States is one of the few countries that allows children under 12 to receive the new Covid vaccine, and Pfizer is the only domestically approved vaccine. Vaccines for children; Fauci said: "My hope is that the mandate will pass in the next month or so before it's too late, but I can't guarantee it."

Pfizer announced in December that it had switched to a three-dose trial after a two-dose trial of the vaccine in young children was less than satisfactory; the company said last month that the evaluation of the trial did not have any safety concerns for children in that age group.

The current single-dose dose of the vaccine is 30 micrograms for adults and children over 12 years old, 10 micrograms for 5 to 12 years old, and 3 micrograms for children under five years old, in three doses.

However, according to the statistics of the Federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), since the outbreak of the epidemic in March 2020, the proportion of deaths of minors infected with new coronary pneumonia has been lower than 0.1%, and the risk is relatively low. Of the population, only 259 were children under the age of five.

A University of Utah study published last October found that as many as 50 percent of children were asymptomatic after contracting the virus; the study was conducted at the height of the outbreak of the mutant virus, Delta, when the highly contagious mutant virus Omicron has not yet broken out.

A study published by the CDC last week also showed that regardless of age, Omicron-infected people are half as likely to be hospitalized and 91 percent less likely to die. The need for vaccinations in young children remains to be assessed.

Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), also does not believe that healthy children need to be vaccinated; she said: "Our goal is to protect the most vulnerable, seriously ill and at highest risk of death, those who are the elderly, the immunocompromised or those with chronic medical conditions, and healthcare workers."

(Photo from Getty Images)

(Source: Compiled from the Online Information)