White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration might approve. Pfizer BioNTech’sIn the coming month, vaccines for children younger than 5 years old.

“My hope for it to be in the next month or two and not later than that,” Fauci told Blue Star Families during an interview. Blue Star Families is a non-profit organization that helps military families.

Fauci stated that younger children may need three doses because Pfizer clinical trials showed two shots failed to produce an adequate immune response for 2- and 4-year-olds.

Pfizer intends to provide data to Food and Drug Administration during the first quarter of 2022, if the study with three doses proves successful. company announced in December. Pfizer stated that it had not identified any safety issues with 3-microgram doses of vaccine for children aged 6 months through 4 years. As part of the primary series, adults receive 30 micrograms each.

Because they are not eligible for vaccine, children under five are especially vulnerable. As the highly contagious Omicron variant spreads rapidly across communities in America, hospitalizations for children suffering from Covid are on the rise.

“Sadly, the rate of hospitalizations for children zero-four are increasing, and these children aren’t eligible for Covid-19 vaccine,” Dr. Rochelle Wilensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters in a conference phone call this month.

As of January 8, nearly 8 of 100,000 children aged under 5 years were being treated with Covid. This is more than twice the number of cases in December, before the Omicron was the predominant variant in America. according to CDCData collected at 250 hospitals in 14 states.

Walensky claimed earlier this month that no evidence has been found to show the omicron-based variant causes severer illness among children. Although she stated that there was an increase in children being hospitalized by the delta variant, research has shown that it did not cause more severe illness than other variants. Data from South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S. has shown that adults are less likely to get omicron.

Walensky suggested that children are being admitted to hospitals more often because of the extraordinary levels of virus transmission throughout the community.