The American Academy of Pediatricians is advising its members that they will be able to vaccinate children ages 5-11 for Covid soon, and it’s time for them get get prepared.
According to the doctors’ trade group, pediatricians will not use the Comirnaty vaccine vials that are approved for use on adolescents and adults.
Younger children will get a different Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and will be receiving 10 micrograms of the substance that evidently to helps ward off the Covid-19 virus.
The group says pediatricians will be able to order the pediatric version soon and will know next week the timeline for their particular state.
“We really think vaccinating in the medical home is going to be the best way to get this age group vaccinated,” Amanda Cohn, M.D., FAAP, deputy incidence manager for vaccines for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Covid-19 emergency response, said in a call with AAP leaders Wednesday, as reported by https://www.aappublications.org. “This includes pediatric clinics, federally qualified health centers, rural health centers.”
The vaccine advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration will meet on Oct. 26 to discuss and advise on emergency use authorization (EUA) of the vaccine for children, and a decision by FDA acting commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock is expected to follow.
If authorized, states and territories could immediately begin ordering and vaccines, and they will be delivered to thousands of sites on a pro-rata basis, the organization reports.
But for pediatricians to actually administer the vaccine to children takes a separate decision by the CDC’s vaccine committee, which meets Nov. 2-3.
According to the group, during the first week after FDA authorization, the minimum pediatric vaccine order will be 300 doses, which will then drop to 100 doses in subsequent weeks.
“The pediatric vaccines will have an orange cap and label to distinguish them from the adolescent/adult formulation,” the group said. “The pediatric vaccines will require diluent that will be provided with other supplies for use in children. The vaccines can be stored for 10 weeks in a refrigerator at 2-8 degrees Celsius.”
More than 6 million children have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the AAP. In the week ending Oct. 7, there were more than 148,000 new pediatric cases and children made up about one quarter of all new cases.
Meanwhile, the doctors’ association reports that about 46% of 12- to 17-year-olds in the U.S. are fully and the number being vaccinated each week is declining. The AAP is encouraging pediatricians to pressure parents and guardians into getting their children vaccinated.
“We know from all of our research … that a person’s health care provider, pediatricians, are a parent’s most trusted source of health care information,” Dr. Cohn said in the AAP story. “And a strong recommendation by a pediatrician for their child to get a COVID vaccine is directly related to uptake in that person.”
Read the complete story at this link.
Whether students will eventually be mandated to show proof of a Covid vaccine to attend school is not at all certain. A year ago, governments promised there would be no mandate for adults, but President Joe Biden has since declared that all federal workers, contractors and employers of over 100 workers must either require a shot of all workers or test them weekly for Covid, at the businesses’ own expense. OSHA has been issuing regulations to support Biden’s mandate. Local schools in Alaska have mandated shots for their staff members and even the University of Alaska Anchorage is mandating the shots for any student who is living on campus.
The pediatricians group has not said whether it thinks there should be mandates for children to get the vaccine, but this past week in Anchorage, the local AAP chapter came out strongly in favor of masking children and adults in the city, saying that masks slow down the spread of Covid and that those who oppose mandating them are anti-science.
