US company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced on Monday that they have submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency approval of their Omicron-adapted COVID-19 vaccine for children aged six months to four years , Reuters and Agerpres report.

If approved, children will receive a primary vaccination schedule with two doses of the original Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and an additional dose of the Omicron-adapted bivalent vaccine, the two companies said.

Their bivalent COVID-19 vaccine, which targets the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the Omicron variant, is currently licensed as a booster dose for people five years of age and older in the United States of America and in the European Union (EU).

Last month, a real-world clinical trial involving more than 360,000 people in the United States showed that vaccines given as an Omicron-adapted booster, including a vaccine made by Moderna, offered enhanced protection against new subvariants of this coronavirus in humans. who received up to four doses of the original vaccine.