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'A sign that things are going to get better' | Pfizer COVID vaccine safe for kids 5-11 years old

Pfizer says the antibody response in children was at least as strong as the full adult dose in patients 16 to 25.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Pfizer says its vaccine is safe and effective for children ages five to eleven and will ask for emergency use authorization from the FDA within weeks.

The company says its trial data shows that when the more than 2,200 children received one-third of the vaccine dose given to adults, the side effects were minimal and were also similar to adults and older children. 

They added that the antibody response in children was at least as strong as the full adult dose in patients 16 to 25.

"For us, it's just a sign that things are going to get better," Tyler Bogart, a parent in Sacramento said.

Bogart has two children under the age of five and he says, although his oldest is still six months shy of being five, they will be first in line to get the vaccine as soon as the time comes. 

"It's super great. I mean, he's almost been asking for it, just because that means a return to normalcy. The promise has been, once there's a vaccine for the kids, we can go back on vacations, we can go to Disneyland more comfortably and safely, just little things that neither of them have been able to do," he said.

This comes a little more than a month after students in the Sacramento region went back to school for in-person learning.

"This can provide peace of mind for parents, and even getting an incremental, small proportion of the population immune by vaccination gets us more back to normal and gets us out of this pandemic," Dr. Dean Blumberg, Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Children's Hospital said.

Dr. Blumberg says this is a big deal because one in five new COVID cases across the country right now are pediatric, with more than 20,000 hospitalizations and 450 deaths. 

"Having that data available now will allow the FDA to take a look at that. Their turnaround time for the emergency use authorization has generally been around a month, so it's possible that we might have vaccine available for this age group starting next month in October," Blumberg said.

But not every parent is ready to be first in line. 

ABC10 went to four different parks across Sacramento and every parent ABC10 spoke with, who doesn't want to vaccinate their child, did not want to talk on camera. Some say they personally need to do more research, and others never got vaccinated as adults in the first place and therefore, they say, they don't believe their kids should need the vaccine either.  

As for vaccines for children under five, Pfizer says the result on that data should be out before the end of the year.

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