Pfizer to start testing Covid jab on babies in plans to vaccinate children
Pfizer has begun testing its coronavirus jab on children under 12 and will soon include young babies in the trials.
The drugmaker is carrying out the testing to ensure its vaccine can be safely given to youngsters, who will be the last in line to get the jab in the UK rollout.
Some of the babies involved in its latest round of tests are just six months old.
The US drugmaker and its German partner BioNTech hope to be able to offer its vaccine to under-12s by early 2022, Pfizer announced this week.
The youngsters in the early-stage trial were given their first injections on Wednesday, a Pfizer spokesperson said.
The UK has ordered 40million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which was the first to be rolled out after regulators gave it the green light in December.
The paediatric trial follows a similar one launched by vaccine maker Moderna last week.
Children are not yet on the UK’s vaccine rollout list as elderly and clinically vulnerable people took priority along with frontline health and care workers. Younger adults will be next in the queue.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock explained late last year that children were not included they have a very low risk of serious Covid illness, and because vaccines had not yet been tested on them.
Researchers at Oxford is currently testing the university’s jab with AstraZeneca on child volunteers aged six to 17.
As many as 240 children will receive the vaccine – and the others will get a control meningitis jab.
Currently, the jab is only authorised for people aged 18 and older as UK health authorities await the outcome of the trials.
In the US, only the Pfizer vaccine has been authorised for use with 16 to 17-year-olds.
Moderna’s shot was cleared for those age 18 and older, and no Covid-19 vaccine has been authorised yet in younger kids in the States while tests continue.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they plan plan to initially test the safety of their two-shot vaccine at three different dosages – 10, 20 and 30 micrograms – in a 144-participant Phase I/II trial.
They plan to later expand to a 4,500-participant late-stage trial in which they will test the safety, tolerability and immune response generated by the vaccine, likely by measuring antibody levels in the youngsters.
Pfizer said the companies hope to have data from the trial by the second half of 2021.
It is testing the vaccine in children from age 12 to 15 first and confirmed it expects to have data from that trial in the coming weeks.
AstraZeneca has recently grappled with safety fears which saw several European countries suspend its rollout.
Leaders were accused of damaging public confidence in the vaccine as polls showed an increase in Europeans unwilling to get the jab – despite medicines regulators declaring it safe.
The UK is currently offering jabs to people age 50 and over, with hopes of moving on to younger groups within weeks after Boris Johnson promised all UK adults would get a jab by the end of July.
More than half of all adults have now received a jab following a bumper effort from the NHS mass vaccination programme, as first dose numbers passed 28million on Thursday.
However the rollout is being hit by supply delays, with younger adults being warned they may wait longer for their jab as the lockdown continues gradually lifting from Monday.
