Health officials in the US state of New York announced that they discovered, through a study, that the effectiveness of two doses of Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 has sharply declined to a level of 12 percent in children between the ages of 5 and 11 years, in conjunction with the outbreak of the mutant Omicron.
If the effectiveness rate fell from 68 percent to 12 percent, this shocking data comes at a time when the New York State plans to end the use of face masks in schools from March 7, 2022.
According to the study, which was supervised by the NYS health ministry, the sharp decline was observed during the peak of the Omicron outbreak from Dec 13, 2021 to Jan 24, 2022.
In addition, it was noted that the percentage of protection provided by the vaccine to children against symptoms that require hospitalization has also decreased to 48 percent during the same period, down from almost 100 percent before that period.
While these results have not yet been peer-reviewed, the researchers caution that it is possible that this significant reduction in vaccine efficacy in children is partly due to the relatively small volume of doses given to children in this age group, injections of 10 micrograms each, while children aged 12 to 17 years receive 30 micrograms of injections.
