Children aged 12 to 15 have will now be eligible to receive the booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US, as per the latest recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday, January 5.

The duration between the initial vaccination and the additional booster dose has also been reduced to five months, from the earlier six, for all age groups.  

“It is critical that we protect our children and teens from COVID-19 infection and the complications of severe disease,” Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said in a statement.

“This booster dose will provide optimized protection against COVID-19 and the Omicron variant. I encourage all parents to keep their children up to date with CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations,” she added.

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The CDC had limited the minimum age group to 16 and 17-year-olds in December.

On Wednesday, the agency’s independent committee of vaccine experts voted in favour of lowering the age group for Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine boosters to children between the ages 12 and 15, reported CNBC.

Just two days before this development, the Food and Drug Administration had authorised these booster doses for children and teens in this age group. FDA vaccine chief Dr Peter Marks told the CDC panel that the rapid spread of omicron prompted the agency to act fast on boosters for adolescents.

The FDA recommendation came after analyzing real-world data from Israel from over 6,000 kids aged 12 to 15, who had received the Pfizer boosters. No new safety concerns or cases of myocarditis or pericarditis were reported among them. 

Dr Marks had said the side effect occurs in about 1 in 10,000 men and boys ages 16 to 30 after their second shot, but a third dose seems to be less risky, reported news agency AP. 

The FDA decided a booster dose was as safe for the younger teens as the older ones based largely on data from 6,300 12- to 15-year-olds in Israel who got a Pfizer booster five months after their second dose. Israeli officials said Wednesday that they’ve seen two cases of mild myocarditis in this age group after giving more boosters, 40,000.

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Almost 3,800 kids are hospitalized with COVID in the US as of Wednesday, according to a seven-day average of data from the Department of Health and Human Services. This is 64% more than the past week and the highest level since the health body started tracking the data in 2020, according to the report by CNBC. 

At least 7.8 million children have caught Covid since the pandemic started, as per the American Academy of Pediatrics.