WASHINGTON — The long-awaited approval for coronavirus immunizations for children under 5 took a major step forward on Monday with an announcement from biomedical giant Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, that their COVID-19 vaccine “was found to elicit a strong immune response,” with no significant adverse reactions.
“Our COVID-19 vaccine has been studied in thousands of children and adolescents, and we are pleased that our formulation for the youngest children, which we carefully selected to be one-tenth of the dose strength for adults, was well tolerated and produced a strong immune response,” Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla said in a statement.
Moderna had submitted similar data to the Food and