Pfizer, an American pharmaceutical company, announced that its COVID-19 vaccine, developed with Germany's BioNTech, showed a 90.7% preventive effect on children aged 5-11.
According to Reuters and Bloomberg News, Pfizer reported this through a briefing submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the 22nd local time.
In a clinical trial conducted by Pfizer on 2,268 children aged 5 to 11 years, 3 of the vaccinated participants and 16 of the participants who received a placebo (fake drug) were each infected.
In this clinical trial, since the number of vaccination groups was more than twice that of the placebo group, the vaccine preventive effect on children was calculated to be 90.7%, the company explained.
However, Pfizer added that the children's clinical trial was not conducted to measure the vaccine's preventive effect, but to compare the amount of neutralizing antibodies produced by the vaccine in children aged 5 to 11 years with a teenager or adult.
These results were submitted ahead of a meeting of an external FDA advisory body on the 26th, and the advisory group will discuss whether to recommend approval for emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine for children 5-11 years old.
Pfizer-BioNtech's COVID-19 vaccine has so far been approved for emergency use only for adolescents 12 years of age or older.
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