Children between the ages of six months and five years who received the initial Moderna COVID-19 vaccine will become eligible for the Moderna booster if they completed their initial vaccine series at least two months prior.
For children aged four and younger who have not yet started their three-dose primary series of the vaccine manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, the updated booster will now be used as the third dose following two doses of the original Pfizer vaccine, according to the FDA.
Children who have already received all three vaccine doses in the Pfizer series will not be eligible for a booster dose at this time, FDA officials said, but the agency plans to review safety and effectiveness data in January for giving those children a fourth dose with the updated booster.
The updated, "bivalent" boosters target both the initial COVID-19 strain and the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of the highly contagious omicron variant.
The updated boosters have been used for all booster vaccinations since the FDA approved them in early September, while the original mRNA vaccines are only currently authorized for initial vaccine series.
Anyone age 12 and up was originally eligible for the bivalent booster and children between the ages of five and 11 have been eligible since mid-October. Common side effects are similar to that of the original vaccine, including soreness at the injection site, fatigue and fever.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that COVID infections have increased statewide by more than 100 percent over the last month, with hospitalizations spiking to 150 percent over the same period.
