Biden administration says Covid vaccine program for kids will be ‘at full strength’ by next week 

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.

In anticipation of the green light, millions of doses are already being assembled and shipped with the first children expected to get 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 and preparing for this moment. We are ready to execute pending CDC’s decision. 

‘And starting the week of November 8, the kids’ vaccination program for kids ages five to 11 will be running at full strength.’

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White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said on Monday during a press briefing (above) that the administration has begun assembling and shipping pediatric doses

Vaccinations are expected to start mid-week, but Zients said the federal program ‘will be running at full strength’ starting 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

During the briefing, Zients said that the federal government had purchased enough doses of the Pfizer pediatric shot to cover all 28 million eligible kids.

Of the roughly 110 million doses, 15 million are being sent out over the next few days.

Youngsters will be able to get the shot at their pediatrician’s offices or local pharmacies, and potentially even their schools rather than mass immunization sites. 

And children’s hospitals will set up clinics on nights and weekends so mothers and fathers can vaccinate their kids after they get off of work. 

Child-size vials that can be kept in refrigerators along with smaller needles necessary for injecting young kids will be sent to providers across the country. 

Zients said parents can also visit vaccines.gov and filter for locations that offer vaccinations for kids to schedule an appointment.

it comes as the CDC’s advisory committee prepares to meet to discuss whether or not to approve Pfizer’s vaccine in children.

For the clinical trial, Pfizer recruited 2,268 kids between ages five and 11.

About half of the youngsters were given two doses 21 days apart and the other half were given placebo shots.  

The team then tested the safety, tolerability and immune response generated by the vaccine by measuring antibody levels in the young subjects.

Pfizer said it had selected lower doses for COVID-19 vaccine trials in children than are given to teenagers and 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 the placebo contracted COVID-19 compared with three in the vaccinated group, which Pfizer said equates to 90.7 percent efficacy. 

In the vaccination group, one participant each had two, three and four Covid symptoms.

Comparatively, in the placebo group, half of the pediatric patients had five or more symptoms.

No life-threatening adverse events were reported with the most common side effect being pain at the injection site, reported in more than 70 percent of kids.

This is about equal with the up to 83 percent of 16-to-25-year-olds in the adult clinical trial who reported the same thing. 

No deaths occurred in either the vaccine group or the placebo group.  

Because of the low risk of severe illness, more than one-third of parents with children in the 5-11 age range are not planning to get their kids vaccinated against Covid, an October survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found

Children are very unlikely to fall severely ill from the virus and and make up fewer than 0.1 percent of all Covid deaths in the U.S.

Because of this, polls have shown that many American parents are not inclined to vaccinate their 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.

Meanwhile, 33 percent say they will ‘wait and see’ how the vaccine is working before deciding whether or not to immunize their kids.

Another five percent of parents say they will only get their children vaccinated if it is required by their schools and 30 percent say they will not get their kids vaccinated at all.