The Biden administration says the COVID-19 vaccination program for children in the U.S. ‘will be running at full strength’ by next week.
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized pediatric doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid shot for kids aged five to 11 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to do the same on Tuesday.
Millions of doses are being assembled in anticipation of the green light and shipped to the first children who will receive their shots on Wednesday.
‘While vaccinations may start later this week, the program will still be ramping up to its full strength, with millions more doses packed, shipped and delivered and thousands of additional sites coming online each day,’ White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said during a press briefing on Monday.
‘Bottom Line, we’ve been planning for this moment and preparing for it. We are ready to execute pending CDC’s decision.
“And beginning the week of November 8, children aged five to eleven years old will receive their vaccines at full strength.
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White House Coronavirus Response coordinator Jeff Zients announced Monday, during a press briefing (above), that the administration has started assembling and shipping pediatric doses
Zients said that vaccinations will begin mid-week but that the federal program ‘will run at full strength’ beginning the week of November 8. Pictured: Marisol Gerardo, 9, is held by her mother as she gets a dose in Pfizer’s Covid vaccine trial at Duke Health in Durham, North Carolina, April 2021
Zients claimed that the federal government had purchased enough Pfizer pediatric shot doses to cover all 28,000,000 eligible kids during the briefing.
15 million of the estimated 110 million doses will be sent out in the next few days.
Youngsters will have the option to get their shot at their local pediatrician’s office or local pharmacy, and possibly even their schools.
Children’s hospitals have clinics that are open on weekends and nights so parents can get their children vaccinated after work.
Providers across the nation will be sent vials in child-size sizes that can be kept in refrigerators.
Zients stated that parents can also visit vaccines.gov to search for vaccinations for their children and schedule an appointment.
It happens as the CDC’s advisory committee prepares for meeting to discuss approval of Pfizer’s vaccine in children.
Pfizer recruited 2,268 children aged five to 11 years old for the clinical trial.
Two doses of placebo were given to half of the children. The first was 21 days apart.
The safety, tolerability, and immune response generated from the vaccine were then tested by the team by measuring the antibody levels in young subjects.
Pfizer stated that it used lower doses of COVID-19 vaccine in children than those given to teenagers or adults.
Those aged 12 and older receive two 30 microgram (μg) doses of the vaccine.
However, children between ages five and 11 were given 10 μg doses – one-third of the size given to adolescents and adults.
Sixteen children who received placebo contracted COVID-19 while three were vaccinated. Pfizer stated that this equates to 90.7 per cent efficacy.
One participant in the vaccination group had either two, three, or four Covid symptoms.
Comparatively, half of the children in the placebo group had five or more symptoms.
There were no life-threatening adverse reactions reported. The most common side effect was pain at the injection site. This was reported in more than 70% of children.
This is almost equal to the 83 percent of 16-25-year-olds participating in the adult clinical trials who reported the exact same thing.
In either the vaccine or placebo group, there were no deaths.
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in October found that more than one third of parents of children aged 5-11 are not planning on getting their children vaccinated against Covid because of the low risk of serious illness.
Children are unlikely to become seriously ill from the virus. They account for less than 0.1 percent of all Covid deaths.
This is why polls show that American parents aren’t inclined to vaccinate children.
One poll from Axios/Ipsos in September found that 44 percent of parents of children aged five to 11 said their kids were likely to get a vaccine and 42 percent said it was unlikely their children would be immunized.
And a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found 27 percent of parents with kids aged five to 11 say that their children will get vaccinated as soon as it’s available.
33 percent of respondents say they will wait to see how the vaccine works before making a decision about whether or not to immunize their children.
Another 5 percent of parents state that they will only get their kids vaccinated if required by their schools, while 30% say they won’t get their kids vaccinated.
