By LAURAN NEERGAARD

AP – The U.S. is expanding COVID-19 boosters as it confronts the omicron surge, with the Food and Drug Administration allowing extra Pfizer shots for children as young as 12.

Boosters already are recommended for everyone 16 and older, and federal regulators on Monday decided they’re also warranted for 12- to 15-year-olds once enough time has passed since their last dose.

But the move, coming as classes restart after the holidays, isn’t the final step. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must decide whether to recommend boosters for the younger teens. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, is expected to rule later this week.

The FDA also said everyone 12 and older who’s eligible for a Pfizer booster can get one as early as five months after their last dose rather than six months.

FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks said in a statement the agency made its decision because a booster “may help provide better protection against both the delta and omicron variants,” especially as omicron is “slightly more resistant” to the vaccine-induced antibodies that help fend off infection.

Real-world data from Israel tracked more than 6,300 12- to 15-year-olds who got a booster there at least five months after their second Pfizer dose and found no serious safety concerns, the FDA said.

Likewise, the FDA said even more data from Israel showed no problems with giving anyone eligible for a Pfizer booster that extra dose a month sooner than the six months that until now has been U.S. policy.

Vaccines still offer strong protection against serious illness from any type of COVID-19. But health authorities are urging everyone who’s eligible to get a booster dose for their best chance at avoiding milder breakthrough infections from the highly contagious omicron mutant.

Children tend to suffer less serious illness from COVID-19 than adults. But child hospitalizations are rising during the omicron wave — most of them unvaccinated.

Pediatrician and global health expert Dr. Philip Landrigan of Boston College welcomed the FDA’s decisions, but stressed that the main need is to get the unvaccinated their first shots.

“It is among unvaccinated people that most of the severe illness and death from COVID will occur in coming weeks,” he said in an email. “Many thousands of lives could be saved if people could persuade themselves to get vaccinated.”

The vaccine made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech is the only U.S. option for children of any age. About 13.5 million 12- to 17-year-olds — just over half that age group — have received two Pfizer shots, according to the CDC.

For families hoping to keep their children as protected as possible, the booster age limit raised questions.

The older teens, 16- and 17-year-olds, became eligible for boosters in early December. But original vaccinations opened for the younger teens, those 12 to 15, back in May. That means those first in line in the spring, potentially millions, are about as many months past their last dose as the slightly older teens.

As for even younger children, kid-size doses for 5- to 11-year-olds rolled out more recently, in November — and experts say healthy youngsters should be protected after their second dose for a while. But the FDA also said Monday that if children that young have severely weakened immune systems, they will be allowed a third dose 28 days after their second. That’s the same third-dose timing already recommended for immune-compromised teens and adults.

Pfizer is studying its vaccine, in even smaller doses, for children younger than 5.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By PATTY NIEBERG, BRADY McCOMBS and COLLEEN SLEVIN

DENVER (AP) — Mike Guanella and his family were relaxing at their Colorado home and looking forward to celebrating a belated family Christmas later Thursday when reports of a nearby grass fire quickly turned into a concerning pre-evacuation notice and then within minutes into an order to leave immediately.

The Guanellas were among tens of thousands of residents who were forced to evacuate their homes outside Denver as wildfires fueled by winds that gusted up to 105 mph (169 kph) engulfed parts of two cities and burned an estimated 580 homes, a hotel and a shopping center.

Instead of opening Christmas presents at home in the city of Superior as they had planned, Guanella and his wife, their three children and three dogs were staying a friend’s house in Denver and hoping their house was still standing.

“Those presents are still under the tree right now. . . we hope,” Guanella said.

At least one first responder and six others were injured in the fires that began Thursday morning, unusually late in the year and following an extremely dry fall and a winter so far nearly devoid of snow. Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle acknowledged that more injuries and also deaths could be possible due to the intensity of fires that quickly swept across the region.

“This is the kind of fire we can’t fight head on,” Pelle said. “We actually had deputy sheriffs and firefighters in areas that had to pull out because they just got overrun,” he added.

As night fell, officials were watching how the winds behaved and the fires reacted to determine when crews are able to go in and begin assessing the damage and searching for any victims.

Evacuations were ordered earlier in the day for the cities of Louisville and Superior, located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Denver and home to a combined 34,000 people. A nearby portion of U.S. Highway 36 also was shut down.

The neighboring towns are filled with middle and upper-middle class subdivisions surrounded by shopping centers, parks and schools. The area is in between Denver and Boulder, a foothills college town home to the University of Colorado.

Residents evacuated fairly calmly and orderly, but the winding streets in the subdivisions quickly became clogged as people tried to get out. It sometimes took cars as long as 45 minutes to advance about a half mile (less than a kilometer).

Small fires cropped up here and there in surprising places — on the grass in a median or in a dumpster in the middle of a parking lot — as wind gusts caused the fire to jump and spread. Shifting winds caused the skies to turn from clear to smoky and then back again as emergency sirens blared nearby.

One video captured by a bystander outside a Superior Costco store showed an apocalyptic scene with winds whipping through barren trees in the parking lot surrounded by gray skies, a hazy sun and small fires scattered across the ground.

Leah Angstman and her husband saw similar skies while returning to their Louisville home from Denver International Airport after being away for the holidays. As they were sitting on the bus going toward Boulder, Angstman recalled instantly leaving clear blue skies and entering clouds of brown and yellow smoke.

“The wind rocked the bus so hard that I thought the bus would tip,” she said.

The visibility was so poor that the bus had to pull over and they waited a half-hour until a regional transit authority van escorted them to a turnaround on the highway.

“The sky was dark, dark brown, and the dirt was blowing in swirls across the sidewalk like snakes,” she said.

Vignesh Kasinath, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Colorado, evacuated from a neighborhood in Superior with his wife and her parents. Kasinath said the family was overwhelmed because of the sudden evacuation warning and anxious from the chaos while trying to leave.

“It’s only because I am active on Twitter I came to know about this,” said Kasinath, who said he did not receive an official evacuation notice from authorities.

Pelle said the first fire erupted just before 10:30 a.m. and was “attacked pretty quickly and laid down later in the day and is currently being monitored” with no structures lost.

A second wildfire, reported just after 11 a.m., “ballooned and spread rapidly east,” Pelle said. The blaze spans 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers).

Some of the several blazes in the area Thursday were sparked by downed power lines.

The fires prompted Gov. Jared Polis to declare a state of a emergency, allowing the state to access disaster emergency funds.

Colorado’s Front Range, where most of the state’s population lives, had an extremely dry and mild fall, and winter so far has continued to be mostly dry. Denver set a record for most consecutive days without snow before it got a small storm on Dec. 10. It hasn’t snowed since, though snow was expected in the region Friday.

Scientists say climate change is making weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. A historic drought and heat waves have made wildfires harder to fight in the U.S. West.

Ninety percent of Boulder County is in severe or extreme drought, and hasn’t seen substantial rainfall since mid-summer.

“With any snow on the ground, this absolutely would not have happened in the way that it did,” said snow hydrologist Keith Musselman, who was at home when Thursday’s fires broke out not far away.

Musselman said this severe fire risk is expected in September and October following a dry summer, but the lack of any precipitation this late in the season is highly unusual.

The National Weather Service predicts up to a foot of snow could fall tomorrow in Boulder, and that moisture would bring substantial relief, Musselman said.

Guanella said he heard from a firefighter friend that his family’s home was still standing Thursday night. And now he can only wait to see whether that holds.

“You’re just waiting to hear if your favorite restaurant is still standing, if the schools that your kids go to are still standing,” Guanella said. “You’re just waiting to get some clarity, hopefully tomorrow.”

____

Associated Press journalist Brittany Peterson contributed to this report. McCombs reported from Salt Lake City. Nieberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/environment.

By AAMER MADHANI

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin are set to discuss the Russian troop buildup near Ukraine on Thursday during their second call in recent weeks amid little progress toward ending the smoldering crisis.

The White House indicated that Biden would make clear to Putin that a diplomatic path remains open even as the Russians have moved an estimated 100,000 troops toward Ukraine and Putin has stepped up his demands for security guarantees precluding NATO from expanding to Ukraine.

Those demands are to be discussed by senior U.S. and Russian officials during talks on Jan. 10 in Geneva.

But Biden will reiterate to Putin that for there to be “real progress” in the talks they must be conducted in “a context of de-escalation rather than escalation,” according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters before the call. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The call was set up on Putin’s initiative, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.

“The goal of the conversation is clear — to continue discussing the issues that were on the agenda during the recent conversation via video conference,” Peskov told reporters. That Dec. 7 call focused on the Russian troop movements, which have unsettled Ukraine and other European allies, as well as Moscow’s demand for security guarantees.

Peskov noted that since that call, Moscow has submitted its security proposals to U.S. and European officials and now “from our point of view, from the point of view of President Putin, the need has arisen for another telephone conversation, which would preface the upcoming talks.”

The official said Biden and Putin, who met in Geneva in June to discuss an array of tensions in the U.S.-Russia relationship, were not expected to take part in the January talks.

In the Dec. 7 video call, the White House said Biden put Moscow on notice that an invasion of Ukraine would bring sanctions and enormous harm to the Russian economy. Russian officials have dismissed the sanction threats.

Moscow and NATO representatives are expected to meet shortly after the upcoming Geneva talks as are Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which includes the United States.

The draft security documents Moscow submitted demand that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet countries and roll back its military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe.

The U.S. and its allies have refused to offer Russia the kind of guarantees on Ukraine that Putin wants, citing NATO’s principle that membership is open to any qualifying country. They agreed, however, to hold talks with Russia to discuss its concerns.

As Biden prepared for the talks with Putin, the administration also sought to highlight the commitment to Ukraine and drive home that Washington is committed to the “principle of nothing about you without you” in shaping policy that affects European allies.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Wednesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Blinken “reiterated the United States’ unwavering support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s borders.”

Biden and administration officials also plan to consult with European allies after the president speaks with Putin to offer them a readout of the engagement.

Putin said earlier this week he would weigh a slew of options if the West fails to meet his push for security guarantees precluding NATO’s expansion to Ukraine.

In Thursday’s call, Biden is expected to stress to Putin that the U.S. is united with its allies but will demonstrate a willingness to engage in “principled diplomacy” with Russia, the administration official said.

In 2014, Russian troops marched into the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and seized the territory from Ukraine. Russia’s annexation of Crimea — one of the darker moments for President Barack Obama on the international stage — looms large as Biden looks to contain the current crisis.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has made clear in public comments that the administration is ready to discuss Moscow’s concerns about NATO in talks with Russian officials, but emphasized that Washington won’t go behind the backs of European allies in shaping policy that affects them.

The two leaders are also expected during Thursday’s call to discuss efforts to persuade Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear accord, which was effectively scrapped by the Trump administration.

Despite differences on Ukraine and other issues, White House officials have said the Iran nuclear issue is one where they believe the U.S. and Russia can work cooperatively.

Biden, who is spending the week in his home state of Delaware, is expected to speak to Putin from his home near Wilmington.

___

Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Moscow contributed to this report.