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On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) authorized the use of a single booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech for children ages 5 through 11.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf said: “While it has largely been the case that COVID-19 tends to be less severe in children than adults, the omicron wave has seen more kids getting sick with the disease and being hospitalized, and children may also experience longer term effects, even following initially mild disease.” Califf said that the authorization for the single dose in the youngest children eligible for the vaccine provides “continued protection against COVID-19,” adding that “vaccination continues to be the most effective way to prevent COVID-19 and its severe consequences… and it is safe.”

Pfizer in late April asked the FDA for the emergency authorization to cover booster shots for children 5 to 11.  Earlier that month, Pfizer and BioNTech released clinical trial data from 140 children between the ages of 5 and 11 who had received a booster shot showing a six-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies against COVID-19.

Last October, federal regulators first authorized use of the vaccine for children between 5 and 11; and late last month, a second booster shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine was approved for those 50 and older.

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During a trip to Buffalo, N.Y., on Tuesday to visit with families of the victims killed in a mass shooting over the weekend, President Biden said that White supremacy is a “poison” that “has no place in America.”  The President and First Lady Jill Biden also met with community leaders, and visited a memorial site for the victims where they added a bouquet of flowers and had a moment of silence.

The attack on Saturday at the TOPS Market in Buffalo killed 10 people and injured three others, making it the deadliest of multiple attacks that occurred in the United States over the weekend. Police say they’re investigating the shooting as a hate crime. Authorities say the suspected shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, was motivated by hate when he opened fire at the store and had written a lengthy manifesto before the attack in which he communicated racist views against people of color. Gendron traveled about 200 miles to Buffalo from his home in another part of New York. Authorities said they believe that Gendron had planned on carrying out more shootings in other locations before he was stopped at the TOPS store.

The President called the shooting an act of domestic terrorism:  “White supremacy is a poison, it’s a poison … running through our body politic…And it’s been allowed to grow and fester right before our eyes. No more, no more. We need to say as clearly and as forcefully as we can that the ideology of White supremacy has no place in America. None.  In America, evil will not win, I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word. The evil did come to Buffalo and it’s come to all too many places, manifested in gunmen who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology, rooted in fear and racism. It’s taken so much.”

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