Moderna said on Tuesday that its Sars-CoV-2 vaccine was "potently effective" in 12-17 year olds. In a clinical trial, the company did not find any cases of symptomatic Covid-19 in participants who received their two doses.
The Moderna results, announced by the company in a press release, are based on a clinical trial involving 3,732 participants between the ages of 12 and 17, two-thirds of whom received two vaccine doses. Researchers found no cases of symptomatic Covid-19 in fully vaccinated adolescents. This 100% effectiveness had also been noted by the companies Pfizer and BioNTech in a trial of their vaccine involving adolescents aged 12 to 15. Additionally, Moderna reports 93% efficacy with a single dose.
The side effects are also similar to those recorded in adults:pain at the injection site, headache, fatigue, muscle pain and some chills. “No significant security issues have been identified to date” , assures Moderna. All study participants will be followed for one year after their second dose.
“This is really great news” , said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. “These vaccines work very well in all age groups and potentially even better in younger people” .
An opinion shared by Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. “Teenagers will be more comfortable being able to go back to school. They will be able to do more social activities. I think this is going to make a big difference in the reopening of our society” .
Following the publication of these excellent results, Moderna plans to seek approval for use of its vaccine in adolescents from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as soon as next June. As a reminder, federal regulators already authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for ages 12 to 15 earlier this month.
However, vaccination coverage for adolescents may still have to wait. While more than 1.7 billion doses of vaccine have already been administered worldwide, there are still huge inequalities between countries. To date, approximately 84% of doses have indeed been offered by people in high- and upper-middle-income countries, while only 0.3% of them have gone to low-income countries. .
“A huge proportion of the world's population lives in countries that currently have no access to doses at all” confirms Andrea Taylor, associate director of programs at Duke University's Global Health Innovation Center. “In one country, we seek to reach children, and in more than 100 other countries, we are desperate to try to vaccinate the most vulnerable populations” .
At the moment, Covax, a global initiative to promote access to vaccines in low- and middle-income countries, is therefore far from having reached its distribution target. .
To remedy this, the IMF recently mentioned a four billion dollar increase in the initial financing of this initiative, hoping to increase vaccination coverage in the countries concerned from 20% to 30 % by the end of the year. For their part, Moderna and Pfizer have committed to supply tens of millions of doses to Covax by the end of 2021.
