Children ready for COVID shots. Here’s what we know about availability, recommendations
COVID-19 shots for children are coming. The question is when?
Pfizer BioNTech’s COVID-19 pediatric vaccine has been authorized by both the FDA and the CDC in separate reviews for use in children ages 5-11.
Tuesday evening, the Western States Scientific Safety Advisory Group met to review the CDC emergency use authorization (EUA) and endorsed use of the vaccine.
That same evening, Dr. Carrie Jenner, a University Place pediatrician with Virginia Mason Franciscan Health and co-chair and board president for the Pierce County Immunization Coalition, sat down with The News Tribune to talk about the vaccines for children.
Already, she noted, she had a waiting list of parents seeking the vaccine for their kids.
“There’s kind of an initial allocation. And then at our Virginia Mason Franciscan Health here in the south, we have a central distribution that goes to St. Joe’s hospital pharmacy, and then they send it out to the clinics,” she explained.
“So we’re planning on providing it through our pediatric and primary care clinics.”
Jenner said she expects the vaccine to arrive at her UP clinic by next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Retail pharmacies participating in the federal vaccine program also will be competing for doses. CVS Health announced it would be offering the pediatric version at only six locations in Washington state starting Sunday.
A media representative for CVS told The News Tribune via email, “Not every location will have the vaccine immediately available upon CDC approval, so parents and guardians are strongly encouraged to visit CVS.com or to use the CVS App to schedule an appointment. The scheduling tool will only display appointments at CVS Pharmacy locations that have the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 years once the patient’s age is provided.”
The retailer said it expected to add more sites “as vaccine allocation increases .... and online scheduling tools will be updated regularly to reflect the new stores with available appointments.”
Jeffrey Zients, the Biden administration’s pandemic response coordinator, said Wednesday that distribution wouldn’t be up to full speed until next week, though the process to begin shipments started minutes after the initial FDA authorization.
“More doses will be packed and shipped and delivered each and every day over the next week,” he said.
UW Medicine started administering the vaccines at one of its clinics on Wednesday, and The Seattle Times reported that the health system already had more than 9,500 signed up on its waiting list.
Storage has improved for this lower-dose version, Jenner noted, remaining stable for 10 weeks in the refrigerator as opposed to 28 days for the adult dose.
It still will be administered in two doses, just like the adult version, “minimum three weeks apart,” she noted. It is 10 micrograms, as opposed to the adult version of 30 micrograms.
“And the cool news is it still was just as efficacious, but the kids 5 to 11 even had less side effects,” she noted, than among older kids. “The most common side effects were pain at the injection site, fatigue and headache.”
She advised parents not to wait for their 11-year-olds to turn 12 to get an adult dose.
“This vaccine is based on your immune maturity. So if you’re 11, you get the the pediatric, the third of the adult dose. ... Say you had a birthday between your first and second dose, you would still get the pediatric dose for your second one; you stick with what you started with,” she said.
She also warned parents not to be lulled into complacency thinking their child doesn’t need it.
“It is true that kids don’t seem to get as sick. However, unfortunately, about a third of kids who’ve had to be hospitalized with COVID are kids with no underlying medical condition,” she said.
“But the other thing that I think is really important is we’ve got to stop this pandemic at some point,” she added.
“Even though the kids are wearing masks at school, we know they’re not perfect. And you know, kids get COVID at school and can bring it home to grandma who’s, you know, undergoing chemotherapy.
“Protecting our kids will also ... get that herd immunity and protect the more vulnerable people in our society.”
In Pierce County, just 47 percent of ages 12-17 are fully vaccinated, the lowest among all age groups. In a presentation at Wednesday’s Board of Health meeting, Kejuan Woods, deputy incident commander for COVID-19 response, said the 5-11 age group represents about 12 percent of COVID 19 cases in the last two weeks.
“We know the rate of the rate of infections and students parallels the disease activity in the community,” he said.
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department on noon Thursday is hosting a public Q&A online with a pediatrician to answer more questions about the pediatric vaccine.
This story was originally published November 3, 2021 at 3:57 PM.
