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Americans between the ages of 12 and 15 years old are now eligible for a coronavirus vaccine. Before Monday, it was only supposed to be available for people ages 16 and up.
Though there are three vaccines being distributed in the United States, only the one made by the companies Pfizer and Biontech is available to adolescents and young teenagers and none of the shots has been formally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. That process can take years though it might be sped up for the COVID-19 shots. The vaccines that are available have been authorized for emergency use, which means they've gotten special FDA clearance to be administered for the time being.
The authorization for the Pfizer drug came after a clinical trial was carried out in more than 2,200 people ages 12 to 15. Pfizer says it showed its vaccine was highly effective and well tolerated with common side effects including pains, fatigues, headache, chills, joint pain and fever.
Those are the same ones observed by adults. Health experts say that vaccinating young people will better protect them from getting coronavirus and from spreading it to people who are more threatened by it. They estimate that the overall survival rate for COVID-19 is about 99.5 percent.
That's an average across all ages. Children are less likely to get seriously sick from coronavirus than older adults.
The authorization for 12 to 15 year olds has gotten a mixed reaction from parents. Some brought in their children for inoculations before the Centers for Disease Control formally recommended them. That was expected to happen on Wednesday afternoon. Some have said they're hesitant or unwilling to get their kids the shot because COVID vaccines were developed faster than any other vaccines in history and because they haven't been available long enough for there to be any long term studies on their effects.
The CDC says that as of early this week, 46 percent of all Americans had gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. That process has not gone as quickly in Japan where there's greater resistance to vaccines than in the U.S. and where less than three percent of the population is estimated to have had at least one dose.
