The U.K. vaccines panel cleared the Pfizer Inc. Covid-19 shot for use in vulnerable young children in a bid to widen vaccination coverage against the omicron variant.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation changed its advice to allow at-risk children aged 5 to 11 years old to become eligible for two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Each inoculation will be one-third of the adult dose.
Only children in a clinical risk group or who are a household contact of an immunosuppressed person are eligible for vaccination at this stage. The JCVI said it would issue advice on shots for less vulnerable children "in due course.”
The panel also recommended that 16- and 17-year-olds can now be offered a booster dose of vaccine, as can children aged 12 to 15 who are clinically vulnerable or immunosuppressed.
The move comes at a key moment in the pandemic as the U.K. grapples with soaring infection rates from the new omicron variant. While children haven’t suffered from Covid-19 as severely as adults, the number of cases in the group has been growing due to their unvaccinated status. That’s raised fears of transmission to grandparents and vulnerable adults over the Christmas period.
The U.K. and the JCVI have come under criticism for moving too slowly on Covid-19 vaccines for children. While the U.S. and most of Europe started offering shots to adolescents in the spring and summer the U.K. didn’t roll out vaccines to that group until September and limited their recommendation to a single dose.
