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Editor's note: This article was originally published on May 11, 2021. It's been updated to reflect new developments.
Kids as young as 12 are now eligible to get a vaccine that protects them from COVID-19.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 10 expanded the emergency use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose vaccine to include adolescents ages 12 to 15. And on May 12, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky signed off the on the decision, adding “providers may begin vaccinating them right away.” The vaccine has been authorized for Americans ages 16 and older since Dec. 11, 2020.
Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D., called the EUA expansion “a significant step in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic” — one that brings “us closer to returning to a sense of normalcy and to ending the pandemic.” Since March 2020, schools, camps, sports leagues and extracurricular activities have been suspended or disrupted. And the mental health of many children and adolescents has suffered, federal data show.
While children and adolescents “generally have a milder COVID-19 disease course as compared to adults,” the FDA says, they are not immune to a coronavirus infection. Approximately 1.5 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported to the CDC in adolescents ages 11 to 17 since the start of the pandemic in the U.S.; close to 500 children younger than 18 have died from COVID-19.
What’s more, children can transmit the virus to other people, making vaccination of younger age groups “important for achieving sufficient levels of population immunity to curb the pandemic,” an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) points out. Adolescents account for 5.3 percent of the U.S. population and 26.6 percent of the U.S. population under the age of 16, according to KFF’s analysis.
