European Medicines Agency assessing Moderna COVID-19 vaccine for children under five

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on Thursday that they are going to evaluate Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for children between the age of six months and five years.

This is the only age group not eligible for vaccination in any country and if the Moderna vaccine is authorised, it will be a huge step considering the rise in Covid cases all around the world in the recent past.

"We have just started the evaluation of an application from Moderna to extend the use of Spikevax to children from six months of age to five years," said senior EMA official Marco Cavaleri.

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"This is the first application for this young age group," he added.

The EMA also said that they are looking to approve vaccines which will be able to combat the latest variants of the Coronavirus - mainly Omicron – by September this year, according to Reuters.

"Our priority is to ensure that adaptive vaccines are possibly approved by September at the latest to be ready for the rollout of new immunisation campaigns in the EU in the autumn."

"This would allow manufacturers to adjust their production lines accordingly," he added.

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The mRNA vaccines, made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are currently undergoing clinical trials.

In related news, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the death count related to the pandemic is three times more than the official toll. “New estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with #COVID19 pandemic (described as “excess mortality”) between 1 Jan 2020 and 31 Dec 2021 was approximately 14.9 million (range 13.3 million to 16.6 million),” the official statement from WHO stated.