The Biden administration has been quietly telling states to prepare to vaccinate younger children against COVID-19 next month.
Recently, Pfizer-BioNTech submitted an application the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand emergency use of its Covid vaccine to include kids between ages five and 11.
An unnamed White House official told NBC News that the federal government ahs been telling state governors that it anticipates the authorization will come in the next few weeks, as soon as early November.
What's more, an official in the Department of Health and Human Services told the news outlet that Biden administration has already purchased 65 million pediatric doses of Pfizer's vaccine.
That's more than the two doses needed to fully vaccinate the 29 million children in the U.S. who would now become eligible.
The White House has been contacting state governors to tell them to prepare to start vaccinating children against COVID-19. Pictured: Marisol Gerardo, 9, is held by her mother as she gets a shot in the Pfizer Covid trial at Duke Health in Durham, North Carolina, April 2021
The Biden administration believes an FDA decision on Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid vaccine in kids could come as soon as early November. Pictured: Biden speaks after signing three proclamations restoring protections for national monuments, October 2021
According to clinicaltrials.gov, Pfizer's study in younger children worked similarly to the way it did in older children and adults.
A total of 4,500 younger kids aged six months and older were enrolled at nearly 100 clinical trial sites in 26 U.S. states, Finland, Poland and Spain.
Of those children, 2,268 were between ages five and 11.
About half of those in the five-to-11 group were given two doses 21 days apart and the other half were given placebo shots.
The team then tested
