Children begin receiving doses of Covid vaccine

Hugs with friends. Birthday parties indoors. Pillow fights. School children who got their first Covid-19 shots Wednesday said these are the pleasures they look forward to as the U.S. enters a game-changing 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 PfizerBioNTech 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, Ga., 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 at the Children's Medical Group site.

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, Va., brought his 8year-old son Carter in for vaccination at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. The boy 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,'' Giglio 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.''

Carter said he can't wait to leave masks behind once he's fully vaccinated, so he can smell the things he used to be able to smell without it.

"I'm ready to trash it," he said, though the CDC still recommends masks in schools and indoor public spaces where virus activity is high, even for the fully vaccinated.

Cate Zeigler-Amon, 10, arrived with her mom and was first in line early Wednesday for a drive-through vaccination at Viral Solutions in Atlanta. The girl bounced around the car, her body hanging halfway out the window 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 eating inside a restaurant, hugging her friends, and celebrating her birthday indoors next month "instead of having a freezing cold outside birthday party."

Hartford Hospital in Connecticut vaccinated seven youngsters Tuesday night, minutes after CDC's director gave the OK, and three more early Wednesday. Mostly staffers' children, the kids were waiting on standby for the CDC announcement, said Eric Arlia, senior pharmacy director for Hartford HealthCare in Connecticut.

One girl squeezed her eyes shut and a little boy barely flinched as they got their shots and other waiting kids applauded, local media video showed.

"It feels like another important step on the journey to being able to vaccinate as many people as we can and put the pandemic to an end,'' Arlia said.

The vaccine — one-third the dose given to older children and adults and administered with kidsized needles — requires two doses three weeks apart, plus two more weeks for full protection to kick in. 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 first thing 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 the next several days, and that millions more will be available to order on a weekly basis.

Authorities said they expected a smooth rollout, unlike the chaos that plagued the national rollout of vaccines for adults nearly a year ago.

Walgreens planned to start kids' vaccinations at their pharmacies on Saturday and said parents could sign up starting Wednesday online or by calling 1800-Walgreens. CVS was also accepting appointments online and by phone for vaccinations 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 either wait or not seek out the vaccines for their kids.

Hannah Hause, a Colorado mother of four children ages 2, 5, 7 and 8, is among those not in any rush. She's vaccinated but wants more time to see how the child vaccines play out and are studied in the larger childhood population.

"It's not studied long-term. It just makes me nervous because that's my whole world," she said of her children.

"As long as I can wait, I will wait," she said.

Walensky said she understood parents' fears but said "we've taken the time to get this right." She said clinical trials in children showed "no severe events" associated with the vaccine.

"The benefits of this vaccine so much outweigh the risks of Covid itself," Walensky told "CBS Mornings" on Wednesday.

Government authorities said pediatricians and family doctors, whom parents depend on to give routine childhood vaccinations, could help build trust.

Dr. Ada Stewart, a Black family physician in Columbia, South Carolina, works at a clinic for underserved patients that has been giving Covid-19 shots to grandparents, parents and teens and said she's ready to add younger children to the mix. She's seen the toll the virus has taken on them — not just in family illness and death but with school disruptions, slipping grades and mental strain.

School closures throughout the pandemic have disproportionately burdened children of color, widening academic gaps and worsening mental health, according to data presented Tuesday to CDC advisers.