COVID vaccines stall for children
For weeks, the school principal had been imploring Kemika Cosey: Would she please allow her children, ages 7 and 11, to get COVID-19 shots?
Cosey remained firm. A hard no. But “Mr. Kip” — Brigham Kiplinger, principal of Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C. — swatted away the “no.”
Since the federal government authorized the coronavirus vaccine for children ages 5-11 nearly three months ago, Kiplinger has been calling the school’s parents, texting, nagging and cajoling daily. Acting as a vaccine advocate — a job usually handled by medical professionals and public health officials — has become central to his role as an educator. “The vaccine is the most important thing happening this year to keep kids in school,” Kiplinger said.
Largely through Kiplinger’s skill as a parent vax whisperer, Garrison Elementary has turned into a public health anomaly: Of the 250 Garrison Wildcats in kindergarten through fifth grade, 80 percent have had at least one shot, he said.
But as the omicron variant has stormed through U.S. classrooms, sending students home and, in some cases, to the hospital, the rate of vaccination overall for America’s 28 million children ages 5-11 remains even lower than health experts feared. According to a new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation based on federal data, only 18.8 percent are fully vaccinated and 28.1 percent have received one dose.
The disparity of rates among states is stark. In Vermont, the share of children who are fully vaccinated is 52 percent; in Mississippi, it is 6 percent.
“It’s going to be a long slog at this point to get the kids vaccinated,” said Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president at Kaiser who specializes in global health policy. She says it will take unwavering persistence like that of Kiplinger, whom she knows firsthand because her child attends his school. “It’s hard, hard work to reach parents.”
After the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorized for younger children in late October, the out-of-the-gate surge in demand lasted a scant few weeks.
It peaked just before Thanksgiving, then dropped precipitously and has since stalled. It hovers at 50,000 to 75,000 new doses a day.
“I was surprised at how quickly the interest in the vaccine for kids petered out,” Kates said. “Even parents who had been vaccinated themselves were more cautious about getting their kids vaccinated.”
Public health officials say persuading parents to get their younger children vaccinated is crucial not only to sustaining in-person education but also to containing the pandemic overall.
With adult vaccination hitting a ceiling — 74 percent of Americans ages 18 and older are fully vaccinated, and most of those who aren’t seem increasingly immovable — unvaccinated elementary school children remain a large, turbulent source of spread. Traveling to and from school on buses, traversing school hallways, bathrooms, classrooms and gyms, they can unknowingly act as viral vectors countless times a day.