The makers of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will soon ask regulators for clearance to use it in children 5 and older, and are getting ready to make smaller doses of the vaccine for younger children, according to one of the founders of BioNTech, the German company that developed the vaccine in partnership with Pfizer.
“We will be presenting the results from our study on 5-to-11-year-olds to authorities around the world in the coming weeks,” Ozlem Tureci, the co-founder of BioNTech and its chief medical officer, told Der Spiegel, a German news site, in an interview published on Friday. She added that the company would be applying for clearance of the use of the vaccine for that age group, including in Europe.
Both the European Union and the United States cleared the Pfizer vaccine for use in children 12 and over in May. They have not cleared any coronavirus vaccines for children younger than 12.
Dr. Tureci, who founded BioNTech with her husband, Ugur Sahin, said the companies were preparing to make smaller doses of the vaccine in anticipation of clearance by authorities.
Dr. Sahin, who is BioNTech’s chief executive, urged anyone who is eligible for vaccination to get their doses before an anticipated wave of infections this fall.
“There are still about 60 days left for us as a society to avoid a tough winter,” he said.
