In spite of the spread of the omicron variant, national COVID-19 vaccination rates for children ages 5-11 remain low. The same is true for children in Harris County, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of CDC data.
Of Harris County’s children aged 5-11, only 18.2% of them are fully vaccinated; 22.2% have received one dose. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced the FDA authorization of their COVID-19 vaccine on October 29, 2021.
In Texas, most counties have low vaccination rates. Only 34 of Texas’ 254 counties have child vaccination rates above 10%.
When compared to other counties in the U.S. with child populations over 100,000 Harris County comes near the bottom of the list when ranked by vaccination rate.
At 13% fully vaccinated, Harris County’s child vaccination rate is barely higher than Dallas County’s (11%), lower than Bexar County’s (14%) and is about half of Travis County’s (26%).
That 18.2% cited appears to be a typo – according to both the embedded image in the story and the Kaiser Health News story, the actual figure is 12.8% for Harris. Half of what Travis County has done to this point, in other words. We have to do better than that.
And as a reminder why, there’s this.
Vaccines continued to provide strong protection against death from COVID-19 in December, even against the new omicron variant, according to state data released Friday.
Unvaccinated Texans were 16 times as likely to die from the virus in December, and were two times as likely to test positive for it. That gap has shrunk from the fall, likely due to omicron’s increased transmissibility.
The divide was most evident for Texans between 65 and 75 years old, who were 19 times more likely to die from COVID if they were unvaccinated. Nearly 80,000 COVID deaths have been reported in Texas since the pandemic began, the majority of them in 2021, when vaccines became available. Just under 1,600 deaths were reported to the state in December.
Yes, not being vaccinated is not the same risk for a 5-year-old as it is for a 75-year-old. But still, there are a lot more kids in the hospitals these days, and the little ones can certainly spread COVID to their elders. Get them their shots already.