The CDC Just Recommended the Covid Vaccine for Children Under Five

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have shown to be safe and effective in clinical trials.

Emma H. Tobin/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Update, 6/18 4:30 p.m. ET: Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has endorsed the decision of a CDC expert panel to recommend the Covid vaccine for young children, meaning everyone in the United States six months and older is now eligible to receive the vaccine.

For parents waiting to vaccinate their toddlers against Covid, I have good news: A panel of advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has voted unanimously to recommend the vaccine for children under age five. 

Following approval from CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna will be available for children down to six months old, as soon as Tuesday. The Food and Drug Administration authorized both vaccines for emergency use on Friday. 

Until now, Pfizer’s Covid vaccine had been available to anyone five years of age or older, and Moderna’s had been available to people ages 18 and older. The authorization from the FDA expanded which age groups were eligible—down to six months in both cases.

The vaccines will be administered in slightly different ways: Moderna’s vaccine, the FDA notes, should be given in a two-dose series, one month apart for healthy children. (A third dose has been approved for immunocompromised children.) Pfizer’s vaccine, on the other hand, should be given in a three-dose series for children under five, with the first two shots given three weeks apart, and a third shot eight weeks later. In February, the FDA decided to postpone its approval of the vaccine for children under five until data on all three doses was available.

“The Pfizer is a three-dose series, but as a three-dose series, it’s quite effective,” Dr. William Towner, who led vaccine trials for both companies, told the New York Times, adding that either vaccine would be better than none.

Both vaccines have shown to be safe and effective in randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials. A full breakdown of the results of the trials is available on the FDA’s website.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate