The EU has approved the Moderna Covid vaccine for children aged 6 to 11

Moderna's anti-Covid vaccination was approved by the European Union's medicines authority on Thursday for children aged six to eleven, making it the second vaccine to be licenced for younger children in the 27-member bloc. 

"The EMA's human medicines committee (CHMP) has recommended that the Covid-19 vaccine Spikevax's indication be extended to include usage in children aged 6 to 11," the European Medicines Agency stated in a statement. 

Moderna, a US-based pharmaceutical company, has previously licenced the vaccine for adults and children aged 12 and up.

"The vaccine is administered as two injections in the muscles of the upper arm, four weeks apart, as in the older age group," the EMA added. In November, Pfizer/anti-Covid BionTech's injection, Comirnaty, was approved for children aged five to eleven.

Pfizer and Moderna, which utilise messenger RNA technology, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, who use viral vector technology, and Novavax, which is based on a spike protein created in a lab, are the five vaccines that have been licenced for use in the EU so far.