Moderna Inc. has begun to study the Covid-19 vaccine in children aged 6 months to 11 years in the US and Canada, the latest effort to extend the mass vaccination campaign to adults.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said Tuesday that the first children have been given doses in the study that Moderna is conducting in conjunction with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“This pediatric study will help us assess the potential safety and immunogenicity of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate in this important younger age group,” said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive of Moderna.
Most of the US Covid-19 vaccination campaign to date has focused on protecting adults, who are at greater risk of serious coronavirus disease than children. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are approved for use in adults 18 years of age and older, while the Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE is approved for use in people 16 years of age and older.
Efforts have begun to test the Covid-19 vaccines in children, who can still become infected, both to protect them from the virus and to further build population-level immunity to get past pandemic limitations.