US Plans Covid-19 Vaccination Program for Children for Day 8

The US Covid-19 vaccination program for children ages 5 to 11 will be “up and running” next week, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said during a virtual meeting at the House. White this Monday (1).

“Although vaccination could begin later this week, the program will still be growing in full force, with millions of doses packaged, shipped and delivered and thousands of additional vaccination sites becoming available online each day,” said Zients.

Right now, 15 million Pfizer vaccines with a specific dosage for children are already being transferred from the freezers and pharmaceutical facilities to the distribution centers.

“So from the week of November 8th, the children’s vaccination program will be fully up and running,” said Zients. “Parents will be able to schedule vaccinations at convenient locations they already know and trust to vaccinate their children. And the number of sites will continue to increase throughout the month as more vaccination sites open their doors for vaccine administration.”

Pfizer’s vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – an agency similar to Anvisa, in the United States, on Friday (29). Vaccine consultants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) meet on Tuesday (2) to consider whether they recommend the use of the immunizing agent in this age group.

Vaccines can be administered after approval of the recommendation by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

Pfizer’s vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 is not just reformulated with a third of the usual dose, but repackaged with a new orange cap, which will make it difficult to mix with the vaccine for adults.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has ensured that it supplies enough vaccine to immunize 28 million children, ages 5 to 11, who are eligible for vaccination. In addition, it will help equip more than 25,000 pediatric and primary care offices, hundreds of community health centers and rural health clinics, as well as tens of thousands of pharmacies to administer doses, according to the White House.

Pfizer’s vaccine for younger children has a lower dosage – 10 micrograms instead of 30 micrograms. The forecast is that the vaccine will be shipped in packs of 100 doses, much smaller than the packs of 1,170 doses used for vaccines in adults.

“The main difference to this release is that pediatric offices are probably the best places to administer vaccines,” wrote Christina Johns, senior medical consultant at PM Pediatrics and a pediatrician in Annapolis, Maryland, in an email to CNN international.

“The biggest challenge now is the unknown. We do not have information about when we can expect to receive shipments and the amount of supplies, which can make it difficult to define dates and times,” said Christina about the vaccination schedule.

“We also want to be aware of the fact that these are schoolchildren, so we need to make sure that there will be minimal loss of teaching time. Our goal is to make the entire process convenient, easy and accessible for families.”

This is a translated text. To read the original in English, click here.

Reference: CNN Brasil

You may also like