TORONTO — A spokeswoman for Ontario’s health minister says children born in 2017 will have to wait for their fifth birthday to be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Alexandra Hilkene says that guidance will remain in place for the time being.
It’s a shift away from the rules that were in place when Pfizer-BioNTech’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccine was approved for use in kids aged five to 11 in Canada last month.
At that point, all kids born in 2016 or earlier were eligible for a shot in Ontario.
Last week, Ontario’s Ministry of Health tweeted that anyone born in 2017 would be eligible for their vaccine starting at the beginning of January — a tweet Hilkene said was published “in error” because the province had yet to make a decision on the matter.
Pfizer continues to test its vaccines for use in kids under the age of five, but reported last week that it was adding a third dose to the trials because the usual two shots didn’t appear strong enough for some of the children.