Good, but not enough in itself.
As a third COVID wave coincides with the back-to-school season, more Texas teenagers are getting the vaccine — but health experts say they need to see shots increase in even larger numbers to protect children from the delta variant.
Vaccinations have gone up recently among all Texas age groups, especially for those under 50, and they’ve more than doubled over the past six weeks for 12- to 17-year-olds.
In the last week of June, about 36,000 Texans under 18 got a shot — the lowest point to date — but that number shot up to 86,000 two weeks ago and remained there last week, according to new data from the state health department.
The jump is promising for public health experts, who stress that vaccines are the best way to avoid severe illness and slow the spread of the coronavirus. Still, youth vaccination rates are the lowest of all age groups in Texas, with just 49 percent of those under 18 getting at least one shot, compared to much higher rates for their elders.
“The percent of adolescents that are eligible for vaccination and have been vaccinated, certainly in Houston and in Texas, is still quite low,” said Dr. Stan Spinner, the vice president and chief medical officer for Texas Children’s Pediatrics and Texas Children’s Urgent Care in Houston. “Yes, the numbers are going up. That’s encouraging. But they’re not going up fast enough.”
About 46 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds, who have been eligible for the Pfizer vaccine since May, have received a shot. Roughly 55 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds have gotten the shot, according to the health department data.
Meanwhile, the number of pediatric COVID cases and hospitalizations has exploded — more than 500 children are currently hospitalized with the virus in Texas. Children account for about 20 percent of all positive COVID tests at Texas Medical Center, Spinner said.
“They are the major component of the population that’s vulnerable,” he said. “They have not been able to get vaccinated, and we know kids get it. We’re seeing it. It’s not a myth. We’re seeing it in larger numbers than ever.”
The increase in vaccinations is unequivocally good, I want to be clear about that. But there are still two concerns. One is that the rate of increase is not enough. About one-fourth of all Texans are under 18, which means in absolute terms between seven and eight million people. Not all of them are currently eligible for the vaccine, but at a rough guess it’s probably two to three million. Even at 100K shots a week, it’ll take us months and months to get to a sufficient level of immunization. We need to increase that 86K figure by a factor of at least five, maybe even ten.
And two, as we well know, while even the first shot conveys some extra level of protection from COVID from the get-go, it takes a month from the first shot to be really protected. We need to be doing more in the here and now to help mitigate the spread of this plague. We all know the drill – masking, avoiding indoor gatherings, social distancing – but as long as our malicious Governor and malignant Attorney General are doing everything in their power to prevent those things, we’re going to continue putting everyone in a maximal amount of jeopardy. We’ve already seen high infection rates in school districts that have been open, and several districts forced to close down in person instruction in the short term. We know what needs to be done. It’s Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton and Dan Patrick who want to stop us from doing them. We can’t let them put our kids, and ourselves, in such danger.