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New York: The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech is much less effective in preventing infection in children ages 5 to 11 than in older adolescents or adults, according to a large new set of data collected by health officials in New York state — a finding that has deep ramifications for the children and their parents.

The Pfizer vaccine is the only COVID shot authorised for that age group in the United States. It still prevents severe illness in the children but offers virtually no protection against infection, even within a month after full immunisation, the data, which was collected during the Omicron surge, suggests.

The sharp drop in the vaccine’s performance in young children may stem from the fact that they receive one-third of the dose given to older children and adults, researchers and federal officials who have reviewed the data said.

Elsa Estrada, 6, smiles at her mother prior to receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Santa Ana, California.Credit:AP

The findings, which were posted online on Monday (Tuesday AEDT), come on the heels of clinical trial results indicating that the vaccine fared poorly in children ages 2 to 4, who received an even smaller dose.

Other studies have shown the vaccine was not powerfully protective against infection with the Omicron variant in adults, either.

“It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising, given this is a vaccine developed in response to an earlier variant,” said Eli Rosenberg, deputy director for science at the New York State Department of Health, who led the study. “It looks very distressing to see this rapid decline, but it’s again all against Omicron.”

Patricia, 8, grimaces after getting her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in Bucharest, Romania.Credit:AP

Still, he and other public health experts said they recommend the shot for children given the protection against severe disease shown even in the new data set.

In their study, Rosenberg and his colleagues analysed data from 852,384 newly fully vaccinated children ages 12 to 17 and 365,502 children ages 5 to 11 between December 13, 2021 and January 31 – the height of the Omicron surge.

The vaccine’s effectiveness against hospitalisation declined to 73 per cent from 85 per cent in the older children. In the younger children, effectiveness dropped to 48 per cent from 100 per cent. But because few children were hospitalised, these estimates have wide margins of error.

The numbers for protection from infection are more reliable. Vaccine effectiveness against infection in the older children decreased to 51 per cent from 66 per cent. But in the younger children, it dropped sharply to just 12 per cent from 68 per cent.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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