Kids eager to roll up their sleeves
Rollout of COVID-19 vaccines for children 5 to 11 gets underway
Hugs with friends. Birthday parties indoors. Pillow fights. Schoolchildren who got their first COVID-19 shots Wednesday said these are the pleasures they look forward to as the U.S. enters a major new phase in fighting the pandemic.
Health officials hailed shots for kids aged 5 to 11 as a major breakthrough after more than 18 months of illness, hospitalizations, deaths and disrupted education.
Kid-sized doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine cleared two final hurdles Tuesday — a recommendation from CDC advisers, followed by a green light from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At a Decatur, Georgia, pediatrician’s office Wednesday, 10-year-old Mackenzie Olson took off her black leather jacket and rolled up her sleeve as her mother looked on.
“I see my friends but not the way I want to. I want to hug them, play games with them that we don’t normally get to,” and have a pillow fight with her best friend, Mackenzie said after getting her shot.
With the federal government promising enough vaccine to protect the nation’s 28 million kids in this age group, pediatricians’ offices and hospitals began inoculating children, with schools, pharmacies and other locations planning to follow suit in the days ahead.
Brian Giglio, 40, of Alexandria, Virginia, brought his 8-year-old son, Carter, in for vaccination at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, where kids with underlying conditions got first dibs.
Carter has Type 1 diabetes that puts him at risk for complications if he were to become infected.
“Carter is the last in our house to get vaccinated and he was always the one that we had the most concern about,” his father said. “And so today is like a hallway pass for us to begin living life again and we couldn’t be more thankful to everybody that’s been involved in this process to helping us feel that freedom that we feel today.”
Cate Zeigler-Amon, 10, was first in line Wednesday for a drive-through vaccination at Viral Solutions in Atlanta. The girl bounced around the car in excitement before the shot, which she broadcast live on her computer during morning announcements at her elementary school.
Afterward, Cate said she was “very, very, very excited and very happy,” looking forward to hugging her friends and celebrating her birthday indoors next month “instead of having a freezing cold outside birthday party.”
The vaccine — one-third the dose given to older children and adults and administered with kid-sized needles — requires two doses three weeks apart, plus two more weeks for full protection. That means children who get vaccinated before Thanksgiving will be covered by Christmas.
“The timing before winter holidays is very fortunate,” said Dr. Jennifer Shu, whose Children’s Medical Group office in Decatur, Georgia, began vaccinating Wednesday. “This age group will be able to spend holidays with friends and family more safely than they have been able to since the start of the pandemic.”
Thousands of pediatricians pre-ordered doses, and Pfizer began shipments soon after the Food and Drug Administration’s decision Friday to authorize emergency use. Pfizer said it expects to make 19,000 shipments totaling about 11 million doses in coming weeks, and millions more will be available to order on a weekly basis.
Authorities said they expect a smooth rollout, unlike the chaos that plagued the national one for adults nearly a year ago.
Asked about parents having trouble finding vaccine appointments, White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said the vaccines.gov website will be updated by Friday for parents to search for locations near them. He said the kid vaccination campaign will be at full speed next week as Pfizer continues to ship millions of doses to locations around the U.S.
And he said more than 6,000 vaccination clinics are being planned at schools around the country before the winter holiday break.
Walgreens planned to start kids’ vaccinations Saturday and said parents could sign up online or by calling 1-800-Walgreens. CVS was also accepting appointments online and by phone at select pharmacies starting Sunday.
Many locations planned mass vaccination events in coming days. And while many pediatricians’ offices were expecting strong demand at least initially, almost two-thirds of parents recently polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation said they would wait or not seek out vaccines for their kids.
Hannah Hause, a Colorado mother of four children ages 2, 5, 7 and 8, is among them. She’s vaccinated but wants to see how the child vaccines play out and are studied in the larger childhood population.
“It’s not studied longterm. It just makes me nervous,” she said. “As long as I can wait, I will wait.”
Infected kids have contributed to the COVID19 death toll in the U.S. — almost 46 million infections and more than 740,000 deaths.
Since the pandemic began, at least 94 children aged 5 to 11 have died from COVID-19 and more than 8,300 have been hospitalized.