The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday approved booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for children ages 12 to 17, citing rising infections among teens and young adults and a disturbing increase in pediatric hospitalizations.
As the contagious Omicron variant spreads across the country, public health officials have seized additional vaccine doses as a first line of defense. Pfizer-BioNTech boosters are now approved for any American over the age of 12 who is five months after his or her second dose of the vaccine.
An advisory committee recommended the changes after a meeting on Wednesday. They were approved by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC. Adolescents ages 12 to 15 can receive boosters immediately. Adolescents 16 and older were already allowed to get booster shots, but on Wednesday, the CDC panel reinforced the recommendation.
The advisory panel followed a similar move by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this week, which approved Pfizer-BioNtech boosters for adolescents and shortened the recommended time interval between the initial vaccine regimen and the booster.
The FDA also approved an “extra primary dose” of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for moderately or severely immunocompromised children ages 5 to 11, to be given 28 days after their second injection.
Studies suggest that side effects of vaccines are minimal in children, although there are ongoing concerns about a link with myocarditis, a rare inflammation of the heart muscle that is more common in young men after vaccination.
In Israel, which started giving boosters to adolescents 12 to 15 years of age in June and closely monitors side effects, the Ministry of Health identified two cases of myocarditis among about 41,600 adolescents in this age group who received the booster.
Both children were hospitalized for a short time and made a full recovery, said Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, an Israeli health official who addressed the committee.
The booster dramatically reduced the number of infections in children ages 12 to 15, said Dr. Alroy-Preis. While most of the infected young people generally did not have serious Covid illness that required hospitalization, two children – a boy and a girl – have died, she said.
But while much of the committee’s discussion has focused on the risks of the vaccine and its side effects, said Dr. Camille Kotton, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who specializes in transplant patients and immunocompromised patients, believes that the focus should be on the disease itself, which has a devastating effect on vulnerable and immunocompromised patients.
“This is important to think about — the risk of myocarditis from the disease itself,” said Dr. Kotton.
Although Omicron is generally seen as the cause of a less serious illness, she says, she now sees countless patients on a ventilator. Some have died.
“It’s a terrible situation,” she said. “The highly contagious nature of Omicron is such that patients who have been incredibly careful over the past two years have been infected with terrible results.”
dr. Katherine Poehling, director of pediatric population health at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC, expressed similar sentiments. “There are children waiting 18 hours and more in the emergency department to get to the hospital because we are so full,” she said. “We have parents asking us if their kids can get a booster dose just like older kids.”
But several committee members said they were increasingly concerned that only a minority of younger children are vaccinated at all, saying it’s critical to increase rates and adhere to other prevention strategies, such as masking.
“We can’t put all the burden on the people who are willing to get vaccinated,” said Lynn Bahta, a committee member who is a registered nurse with the Minnesota Department of Health. “If we only vaccinate half of our adolescents, that is also an extra burden. I am so concerned that the burden of disease prevention is all going to be on the vaccinated and they are getting the boosters.”
More than 70 percent of people aged 12 years and older in the United States are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. Children under the age of 5 are still not eligible for vaccination.
Americans 18 and older who have received Moderna’s vaccine can receive a booster of any available coronavirus vaccine six months after the second injection. Those who received the Johnson & Johnson single vaccine can receive a booster dose of any available vaccine two months after their first injection.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are both highly preferred over the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the CDC said. Only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is approved for children ages 5 to 11; boosters are not yet recommended for this group.