A good start, but we can do a lot more.
Texas Children’s Hospital has administered COVID-19 vaccines to nearly 6,000 children ages 6 months through 4 years old since the youngest age group became eligible to receive the shots last week, the hospital said Thursday.
“We’ve been waiting for a long time to be able to protect our youngest children,” said Dr. Stan Spinner, the chief medical officer and vice president of Texas Children’s Pediatrics. “We’ve had families asking for a long time ‘When is this vaccine going to be available for our kids?’ And now it is.”
Still, the overall share of children younger than 5 who have received the shot is incredibly low — hovering around 1 percent statewide.
Another 3,000 children are scheduled for vaccine appointments at Texas Children’s Hospital or more than 60 Texas Children’s Pediatrics locations in the Houston, Austin and College Station areas, hospital spokeswoman Natasha Barrett said during a news conference.
Vaccines are also available to kids under 5 at other hospitals, including Children’s Memorial Hermann, as well as pediatrician’s offices, pharmacies and other locations.
Across Texas,the overall interest in vaccines for children has been lagging. Just 26 percent of Texas residents aged 5 to 11 and 59 percent of residents aged 12 to 17 are fully v accinated, according to data from The New York Times. Just 4 percent of Texas residents under 18 years old have received a booster.
However, Texas Children’s doctors said they have also been encouraged by that fact that families with children 5 to 11 years old have been signing up for booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved booster shots for that age group last month.
My kids are older and got vaxxed and boosted at their first opportunities. If there’s an omicron-specific booster this fall, they’ll get that, too. I’ve definitely been disappointed by the low vaccination rate among younger kids, but maybe that will turn around now. Even with the lower hospitalization and mortality rates, so many people have gotten an infection lately that perhaps the ongoing threat of this pandemic is sinking in again. We all still need to do our part to try to keep this under some control.
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