Moderna asking FDA to give COVID vaccines to young kids

Moderna announced on Wednesday that two low-dose shots of its COVID vaccine is effective against the omicron variant in children younger than 6 and older than 6 months.

“We now have clinical data on the performance of our vaccine from infants six months of age through older adults," said Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel.

As a reult of its trial, Moderna said it is requesting an emergency use authorization to administer the vaccine to children older than six months.

The company said Wednesday that its vaccine was 44 percent effective at preventing a COVID infection in children aged 6 months to 2 years old, and 38 percent effective at preventing infection in children aged 2 to 5.

All of the children who received the vaccine and were infected with the coronavirus had mild infections, Moderna said, “and no severe COVID-19 disease was observed in either age group,” the company said.

All reactions from the shots were considered mild to moderate, and most happened after the second dose. The majority of those reactions were pain at the injection site, fatigue and headache, among others.

In Connecticut, vaccines among children ages 5 to 11 lag behind older age groups. As of last week, 48 percent of those children in Connecticut are fully vaccinated.

On Wednesday, Connecticut said 396 additional cases of the coronavirus had been identified out of 12,196 tests reported in the previous 24 hours, for a positivity rate of 3.25 percent, a slight bump up from Monday.

The state said there had been a net decrease of one patient hospitalized for COVID, for a total of 99 patients in Connecticut hospitals fighting a coronavirus infection.