The White House is encouraging schools to host community conversations and share fact sheets on the vaccines and is working with the American Academy of Pediatrics to partner local physicians with schools aiming to share science-based information about the shots.
About 28 million kids ages 5 to 11 are newly eligible for shots now that the Pfizer vaccine is approved for the age group. The White House says the federal government has procured enough of the two-dose vaccine for all of them.
A Pfizer study of 2,268 children found the vaccine was almost 91 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections. The Food and Drug Administration studied the shots in 3,100 vaccinated kids in concluding the shots are safe.
While kids are less likely than adults to develop severe COVID-19, with the delta variant they get infected and transmit “just as readily as adults do”, Dr Anthony Fauci, government’s top infectious diseases expert, said at a recent White House briefing.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began, at least 94 children ages 5 to 11 have died from COVID-19, more than 8,300 have been hospitalised and more than 5,000 have developed a serious inflammatory condition linked to the virus.
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