On Friday, Pfizer-BioNTech released a study report that said its kid sized doses of COVID-19 vaccines for the age group 5 to 11 years appeared safe. It also said that it had an almost 91 percent efficacy in preventing symptomatic infections. The study details were posted online and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will check the evidence and publicly debate it next week. Children could be vaccinated by Christmas if the vaccine gets approval.

Pfizer has also submitted its study to a medical journal. The FDA will also publish its review of the data presented by Pfizer.

The study consisted of 2,268 volunteers. Two-thirds of the group receive the Pfizer vaccine while one third received a placebo. The group was somewhat evenly split:gender and race wise.

Pfizer’s study reported that low doses of the vaccine were safe for kids. Few temporary side effects including fever, sore arms and aches as seen among the teen group as well. There were no severe COVID-19 cases or deaths among both the groups. The group size was too small for it to study rare side effects such as heart inflammations that were seen in a small percentage of teenagers.

Children are lesser likely to be infected with severe COVID-19 or death. However, according to a report from CNBC News, the CDC reported that 630 Americans who were under the age of 18 died due to a COVID-19 infection. The report also said that the American Academy of Pediatrics said that almost 6.2 million children were infected by the coronavirus. Of these over 1.1 million caught the infection, these past six weeks, after the surge of the delta variant.

Moderna is also studying the effects of its shots in elementary school-age kids. Pfizer and Moderna are also studying the effects of low doses of their vaccine in infants who are six months old and expect to publish these results before the end of the year.

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