An Australian paediatrician says constant vaccine safety monitoring and real world data from the US gives her confidence in recommending the Covid vaccine to children aged 5-11 years.
The Pfizer vaccine was approved last week for 5-11 year old's in Australia, and will begin its rollout from January 2022.
On Thursday, the vaccine was provisionally approved in New Zealand for the same age group, however Ministry of Health officials still need to advise Government Ministers, who will deliver the final sign off.
Margie Danchin, paediatrician at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and immunisation expert, answered questions sent in by people from Australia and New Zealand about the vaccine approval, during a live Facebook Q&A on Thursday aimed at informing parents.
One of the main concerns aired by those who took part was the overall safety of the vaccine for kids, and whether it was still in “experimental” trial stage.
Danchin told those watching that for a vaccine to be approved, regulators require “robust vaccine clinical data”.
“That’s from those three phases which is the first phase around the safety, the second around the immune response and the third or phase three clinical trials is more around the clinical protection that the vaccine gives,” said Danchin.
“So that data has been required for children.”
The Pfizer clinical trial in five-11 year olds has now been expanded out to 5000 children, from 2000, said Danchin.
She said initial trial results released a month or so ago were “really encouraging”.
“It showed that the kids had a really good and strong immune response and it showed in terms of clinical protection against the child getting symptomatic Covid infection, it was 91 per cent effective.
“There’s constant vaccine safety monitoring, and more importantly real world data is now available,” said Denchin.
That real world data comes from the over five million children in the US who have received their first dose of the vaccine.
She said Australia can learn from the US experience.
"We have now access to quite a lot of safety data, and it’s really really reassuring which is why we all feel so confident recommending the vaccine to kids.”
On Thursday, New Zealand's Ministry of Health immunisation director Astrid Koornneef said preparation was already underway for the potential rollout of the doses.
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