3rd shot protects children under 5, Pfizer announces
Three doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine offer strong protection for children younger than 5, the company announced Monday. Pfizer plans to give the data to U.S. regulators later this week in a step toward letting the littlest kids get the shots.
The news comes after months of anxious waiting by parents desperate to vaccinate their babies, toddlers and preschoolers, especially as COVID-19 cases once again are rising. The 18 million tots under 5 are the only group in the U.S. not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination.
The Food and Drug Administration has begun evaluating data from rival Moderna, which hopes to begin offering two kid-size shots by summer.
Pfizer has had a bumpier time figuring out its approach. It aims to give tots an even lower dose — just one-tenth of the amount adults receive — but discovered during its trial that two shots didn’t seem quite strong enough for preschoolers. So researchers gave a third shot to more than 1,600 youngsters — from age 6 months to 4 years — during the winter surge of the omicron variant.
In a press release, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said the extra shot did the trick, revving up tots’ levels of virus-fighting antibodies enough to meet FDA criteria for emergency use of the vaccine with no safety problems.
Preliminary data suggested the three-dose series is 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, the companies said.
What’s next? FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks has pledged the agency will “move quickly without sacrificing our standards” in evaluating totsize doses from both Pfizer and Moderna.
The agency has set tentative dates next month for its scientific advisers to publicly debate data from each company.
While COVID-19 generally isn’t as dangerous to youngsters as to adults, some children do become severely ill or even die. And the omicron variant hit children especially hard, with those under 5 hospitalized at higher rates than at the peak of the previous delta surge.
CHINA Beijing extends stay-home orders
Beijing extended orders for workers and students to stay home and ordered additional mass testing Monday as cases of COVID-19 rose in the Chinese capital.
Numerous residential compounds in the city have restricted movement in and out, although conditions remain far less severe than in Shanghai, where millions of citizens have been under varying degrees of lockdown for two months.
Beijing on Monday reported an uptick in new cases to 99, up from a previous daily average of around 50. Two more districts, Shijingshan and Haidian, began a work-from-home policy this week, bringing the total to six. In cases where people need to go to their offices, the number of workers is limited to 30% of the normal level.
Nationwide, China reported 802 new cases Monday, marking a steady decline interrupted only by small-scale localized outbreaks. About 550 of the new cases were in Shanghai, where restrictions are only gradually being eased. The city reopened four of its 20 subway lines on Sunday, with trains operating on a reduced schedule of every 20 minutes from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
A reopening of transport links out of Shanghai has created an exodus of migrant workers and others who were trapped by the lockdown. Among those who remain, some have been issued exit passes to leave their residential compounds or neighborhoods for a limited time for shopping or walks, while others remain restricted to their buildings.
Huge funeral held despite outbreak
A huge number of North Koreans including leader Kim Jong Un attended a funeral for a top official, state media reported Monday, as the country maintained the much-disputed claim that its suspected coronavirus outbreak is subsiding.
Since admitting earlier this month to an outbreak of the highly contagious omicron variant, North Korea has only stated how many people have fevers daily and identified just a fraction of the cases as COVID-19.
The official Korean Central News Agency said Kim attended the funeral Sunday of Hyon Chol Hae, a Korean People’s Army marshal who played a key role in grooming him as the country’s next leader before Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, died in late 2011.
In what was one of the country’s biggest state funerals since his father’s death, a bare-faced Kim Jong Un carried Hyon’s coffin with other top officials who wore masks before he threw earth to his grave with his hands at the national cemetery. Kim and hundreds of masked soldiers and officials also deeply bowed before Hyon’s grave, state TV footage showed.
During Sunday’s funeral, most people, except for Kim Jong Un and honor guards, wore masks. The North’s ongoing outbreak was likely caused by the April 25 military parade and related events that drew large crowds of people who wore no masks.
Masking at schools begins again
As students and teachers in Philadelphia returned to school Monday, they had to wear masks once again, as coronavirus cases continue to rise — the latest twist in the city’s evolving approach to masking.
William R. Hite Jr., the superintendent of the Philadelphia School District, emphasized that the district was remaining flexible to adjust to new threats from COVID-19.
Last month, Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to reinstate an indoor mask mandate in response to rising coronavirus cases, only to have its health department decide four days later to lift the order because of improving conditions.