The companies will now submit their results to the FDA, with the hope that they can vaccinate young adolescents before the start of the next school year.
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March
31, 2021
2 min read
Pfizer and BioNTech jointly announced today that its coronavirus vaccine is 100% effective in teens between the ages of 12 and 15.
In a press release, the companies said that a trial involving 2,260 participants found that the efficacy rate of its Covid-19 vaccine among those in their early teens was higher than that among previous participants who were between the ages of 16 and 25.
“We share the urgency to expand the authorization of our vaccine to use in younger populations and are encouraged by the clinical trial data from adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.
The companies now plan to submit its results to the FDA and other regulatory agencies across the globe, with the hope that they will be able to vaccinate young adolescents before the start of the next school year.
“Across the globe, we are longing for a normal life,” BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin added. “This is especially true for our children. The initial results we have seen in the adolescent studies suggest that children are particularly well protected by vaccination, which is very encouraging given the trends we have seen in recent weeks regarding the spread of the B.1.1.7 UK variant.”
While the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is one of three authorized vaccines in the U.S., it is the only one in the country that can be officially administered to 16- and 17-year-olds. The companies are currently testing their vaccine on children between 6 months and 11 years old.
The news comes just days after British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca released updated results of its own vaccine and claimed a 79% efficacy rate against symptomatic cases.