Fauci said a COVID-19 vaccine will be available to young children in the fall

School children walk with masks and backpacks on. — In this Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021 file photo, Students, some wearing protective masks, arrive for the first day of school at Sessums Elementary School in Riverview, Fla.
AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File

Vaccines could be available for use in children under 12 in the fall, Dr. Anthony Fauci said.
The Pfizer vaccine will likely become available for young children before the Moderna vaccine, he added.
Under an ideal timeline, children could receive the shot by the end of October.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday that a COVID-19 vaccine for children under the age of 12 would be available in the fall.

"It will certainly be this fall," said Fauci, the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, during an appearance on ABC News' "This Week."

"When you talk about the rollout for vaccines again, there will be a little bit of a different in time frame, maybe a couple of weeks between Pfizer and Moderna and others," he told ABC News' Martha Raddatz.

"So, what we're going to almost certainly see is that sometime in the next few weeks as we get into October, we'll be able to see the vaccines for children get enough data to be presented for safety and immunogenicity, but when it gets to Moderna, it will probably be a few weeks beyond that, maybe the end of October, beginning to have November," he added.

-This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 19, 2021

He said that the data would likely be available sometime in "mid to late fall" for US officials to make the decision on authorizing a vaccine in use for children aged 11 to five years old.

As Insider previously reported, both Pfizer and Moderna began enrolling children in their vaccine trials in March Moderna previously said it expected to have data about its vaccine's efficacy in young children in late fall or early winter, while Pfizer planned to have the data ready by the end of September.

It will likely take the US Food and Drug Administration several weeks to review the data before making a final decision on providing the emergency use authorization to use the vaccines.

In a best-case scenario, children aged five to 11 could be eligible to receive the vaccine by the end of October, said former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who serves on Pfizer's board, Insider's Aria Bendix reported last week In the same best-case scenario, the vaccine could be authorized for use in children 6 months old to 5 years old by late November.

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