McMaster infectious disease expert welcomes approved Pfizer vaccine for kids

Health Canada has approved the first COVID-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11 throughout the country.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech submitted a request for approval of a child-sized dose of its mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 on Oct. 18.

“It’s good news,” said Dr. Zain Chagla, a professor of infectious diseases at McMaster University. “Ontario is trying to schedule an eight-week difference between both doses to increase the immunity from the vaccine, but also balance against potentially some of the side effects.”

Pfizer-BioNTech say the results of their trials in children show comparable efficacy and safety results to those recorded in a previous Pfizer-BioNTech study in adults aged 16 to 25.

Health Canada said it would only approve the vaccine for children if its research showed the benefits outweigh the potential risks.

The companies have changed the formulation of the pediatric vaccine slightly, so new vaccines must be delivered to Canada before children can receive a shot.

Canada is expecting an accelerated delivery of 2.9 million child-sized doses, enough for a first dose for every child in the five to 11 age group.

“When they did the studies, they looked at a third of the dose in kids to mitigate some of those sore arm, fever side effects,” Chagla said. “But they did see that antibody levels in those kids, even up to the age of 11, were equivalent to that of the 12 to 15-year-old trials that got the full dose.”

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