Pfizer to request booster EUA for children

Pfizer last week announced it will be seeking emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA to give the COVID-19 booster shot to children ages 5-11. 

The pharmaceutical giant claimed its experimental trial on 140 children showed a six-fold increase in antibodies against the original strain of the virus, reported NBC News. The company also said that a subset of 30 of those children saw a thirty-six-fold increase in antibodies over the first two doses. 

It is unclear why Pfizer seeks to inject children for a strain that is no longer prevalent. 

It is also unclear why Pfizer is seeking to inject children at all, and with emergency use authorization at that, given that there is no emergency.  

Neither Pfizer nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has data on child deaths from Omicron. 

Until this week, the CDC claimed that COVID-19 was a leading cause of death among children and responsible for nearly 100 child deaths, but deleted this claim after a report by Frontline News. 

The now-deleted paragraph read:  

“As of mid-October 2021, children ages 5 through 11 years have experienced more than 8,300 COVID-19 related hospitalizations and nearly 100 deaths from COVID-19. In fact, COVID-19 ranks as one of the top 10 causes of death for children ages 5 through 11 years.” 

But as Frontline News reported last week, the CDC officially admitted to having no data on child deaths from COVID-19 in response last month to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from attorney Aaron Siri.  

On Monday, just days after the report, the paragraph was quietly deleted. 

The CDC also came under fire last month for falsely adding 72,000 deaths, including 416 child deaths, to its COVID-19 death count.  The center claimed it was a “coding error”.