Five to 11-year-old children in Australia could start receiving COVID-19 vaccines within a few months from now, subject to a final green light by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI).
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt announced on Sunday that Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has provisionally approved the Pfizer vaccine for children in that age category.
“The TGA’s provisional approval of the Pfizer vaccine for 5 to 11-year-olds was based on a careful evaluation of available data to support its safety and efficacy among this age group.
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“The vaccine dose approved by the TGA for children aged 5 to 11 is the same safe and effective vaccine used for other age cohorts, however is one-third the dose approved for those aged 12 and over,” he said.
Vaccine doses intended for children of this age cohort will “be distributed to vaccine providers in different packaging to the vaccine approved for people 12 and over, and will be clearly differentiated by being dispensed from orange-capped vials instead of grey or purple capped vials.”
Doses will be administered, as in other age groups, at least three weeks apart.
The TGA’s provisional approval marks the first out of four steps to be completed before children can receive the jab, the Health Minister said.
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Required stages to follow are: the recommendation of vaccine use from ATAGI, training in relation to the use of the Pfizer vaccine in paediatric cases. and the final step is batch-testing.
“The first shipment of children’s doses are due to arrive in Australia by early January 2022 and will undergo the same rigorous batch testing processes in the TGA laboratories as other batches of COVID-19 vaccines.”
Speaking to the ABC, Head of the TGA, Professor John Skerritt, said there no safety concerns have arisen from extensive use of the vaccine in children, with some “brief and fairly short-lived” effects present as in adults: “tiredness, sore arms, headache and so forth”.
The vaccine roll out to children between 5 and 11 years-old has already began un the United States, and elsewhere including Israel and Denmark.
According to Professor Skerritt, while COVID-19 tended to be very mild in children, there are important reasons for them to get vaccinated including to protect against the small risk or serious illness and counter the possibility that children catch the virus and spread it to family members.
An application from Moderna for its COVID-19 vaccine to be used in Australia for children aged 6 to 11 is also currently being evaluated by the TGA.
Across the country, 87.9% of Australians aged 16 or over are fully vaccinated. More than 92.8% have had at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
