The European Medicines Agency (EMA) decided on May 28 to allow the use of the Pfizer / BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for children from 12 years of age.
Such a decision has already been made in the United States and Canada.
This announcement from the EMA comes a few weeks after it had launched the evaluation for the use of vaccines for the age group 12-15 years. The vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech is already used in the EU for people over 16 years of age.
The EMA said the two doses of the vaccine should be given to people aged 12-15 with an interval of at least three weeks, adding that EU countries can decide whether or not to vaccinate adolescents.
To date, approximately 173 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in the 27 countries of the European Union.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s director for Europe, Hans Kluge, warned on May 28 that Europe would not defeat the pandemic until 70 percent of the population was vaccinated, adding that the vaccination campaign in Europe was still “very slow”. .
Kluge also said that the new variants of the virus, which are more contagious, remain worrying.