In Brief : US authorises Pfizer's vaccine for children aged five to 11
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US authorises Pfizer's vaccine for children aged five to 11
WASHINGTON • The United States has authorised Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11 years, after a committee of experts found that its benefits outweighed the risks.
A clinical trial involving more than 2,000 participants was found to be more than 90 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic disease.
The safety of the vaccine was studied in more than 3,000 children and no serious side effects have been detected in the ongoing study.
In this age group, the vaccine is given as two shots three weeks apart, at a dose of 10 micrograms - a third of that which is given to older age groups.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Vaccination offers more protection than past Covid-19 infection
NEW YORK • A new study by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that vaccination provides stronger and more reliable protection against the coronavirus than a past infection does.
Unvaccinated people who had previously recovered from a coronavirus infection were five times as likely to get Covid-19 as people who had received both shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, the CDC said on Friday.
Two doses of an mRNA vaccine produce more antibodies, and more reliably so than a coronavirus infection does. But the antibodies from prior infection are more diverse, potentially helping people fend off variants.
Whatever the effect, doctors have warned that acquiring natural immunity is perilous and uncertain.
NYTIMES
Needle-free vaccine patches show promising results: Study
WASHINGTON • Researchers have doubled down on efforts to create patches that deliver life-saving drugs painlessly to the skin, a development that could revolutionise medicine, after a new study showed promising results.
An Australian-American team used patches measuring one square centimetre dotted with more than 5,000 microscopic spikes "so tiny you can't actually see them", said Dr David Muller, a virologist at the University of Queensland and co-author of the paper published in the journal Science Advances.
The technique could help save children's tears at clinics and help people who have a phobia of syringes. Beyond that, skin patches could assist with distribution efforts because they do not have cold-chain requirements and might even heighten vaccine efficacy, the paper said.
The main challenge now is production, with no manufacturers yet able to make enough patches en masse.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
