Slow start to vaccinate children frustrates US government

Of the 28 million American children eligible for the vaccine in that age group, about 5 million have received at least one dose, according to federal data, likely meeting the initial demand from parents who were waiting to vaccinate. to his children.

At the current rate, Less than half of American children ages 5 to 11 are expected to be fully vaccinated in the coming monthsstate officials told Reuters. Some states, like Mississippi, said that thousands of doses of vaccines are still not used.

“We are concerned that demand is not going to be as fast and as great as it was for the adult population,” said Karyl Rattay, director of the Delaware Division of Public Health.

The United States last month authorized the use of a smaller dose of the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech for children ages 5 to 11, and the first injections reached the young people’s arms on November 3.

Doubts about the vaccine among adult caregivers have affected the vaccination rate of this age group more than that of other groups, doctors told Reuters.

“I think parents are nervous. There is probably a cohort of parents who are comfortable vaccinating themselves but are hesitant to vaccinate their children, “said Dr. Matthew Harris, a pediatrician who directs Covid-19 vaccination for New York’s Northwell Health hospital system.

The campaign to vaccinate children has taken on a new urgency amid concerns that the new variant omicron of the virus, first identified in southern Africa and Hong Kong in late November, is spreading rapidly in the United States, fueling an increase in infections that have already grown due to the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, easy to transmit.

Fewer than 20% of American children ages 5 to 11 have been vaccinated at least once so far, compared with about 80% of American adults, according to federal data.

Of particular concern is that the number of American children getting vaccinated against Covid-19 may be stagnant.