Younger children across the US are now eligible to receive Pfizer Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine, after the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention granted the final clearance needed for shots to begin.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky recommended the vaccine for children from 5 to 11 years old. The decision ushers in a new phase in the US pandemic response, widening access to vaccines to some 28 million more people at the same time that Americans who received shots earlier in the pandemic are lining up for booster doses.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a group of outside experts, earlier voted 14-0 in favour of giving children the shot, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech SE, after it was cleared on Friday by US regulators. Administered in two injections three weeks apart, the vaccine is one-third the dose authorised for adults.

“Today is a monumental day in the course of this pandemic, and one that many of us have been very eager to see,” Walensky said at the opening of the panel’s all-day meeting. “For almost two full years, schools have been fundamentally changed; there have been children in second grade who have never experienced a normal school year.”

Safety data in children look very good, said Camille Kotton, an ACIP panel member, adding she would feel comfortable having her own children immunised if they were in that age group.

“We have accumulated a tremendous amount of safety data with hundreds of millions of Americans,” said Kotton, who is also the clinical director of transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, in an interview after the vote.

Children should be vaccinated “both to prevent death as well as to prevent major long-term effects of having this devastating infection,” she said.

Myocarditis risk

While CDC advisers recommended approval of the shot, some expressed concern about myocarditis, an inflammatory heart condition that’s been seen in some recipients. Health officials have been paying close attention to the risks posed by myocarditis following the shot compared with the overall risks of Covid.

Matthew Oster, a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, said he believes 5- to 11-year-olds have a relatively low risk of developing myocarditis from the shots. “We will watch and see for sure — and they may have some — but I don’t think it’s nearly to the extent” of cases seen in older adolescents and young adults, said Oster, who’s also on the CDC Covid-19 Response vaccine task force.

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