ເດັກນ້ອຍໄດ້ຮັບການສັກຢາວັກຊີນປ້ອງກັນໂຣກ coronavirus ສໍາລັບເດັກນ້ອຍ Pfizer-BioNTech (COVID-19).
Mayela Lopez | Reuters
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent vaccine experts on Saturday backed Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid-19 shots for children as young as 6 months.
The CDC committee voted unanimously to recommend the shots for use in infants through preschoolers after two days of meetings that were open to the public. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is expected to sign off on the committee’s recommendation this weekend, which would allow pharmacies and doctor’s office to start administering the shots.
The White House expects vaccinations for children under age 5 to begin Tuesday, after the Juneteenth federal holiday. Appointment availability might be limited initially but every parent who wants to get their child vaccinated should be able to do so in the next few weeks, according to Dr. Ashish Jha, who oversees the Biden administration’s Covid response.
Nearly everyone in the U.S. is now eligible for Covid vaccination less than two years after the first shots were authorized for the elderly in December 2020.
“I am fully confident that vaccines should be recommended,” said Dr. Grace Lee, chairperson of the CDC committee. “We can clearly prevent hospitalizations and deaths. And I believe we have the potential to prevent long-term complications of infections that we don’t yet understand.”
Covid risk for kids
Although Covid is normally less severe in children than adults, the virus can be life threatening for some kids. Covid is the fifth leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4, ອີງຕາມຂໍ້ມູນ CDC. More than 200 children ages 6 months to 4-years-old have died from Covid since January 2020.
More than 2 million children in this age group have been infected with Covid during the pandemic, and more than 20,000 have been hospitalized, according to CDC data.
Hospitalizations of children under age 5 with Covid spiked during the winter omicron wave, hitting the highest level of the pandemic for this age group. The overwhelming majority of them, 86%, were admitted primarily due to the impact of Covid on their health, ອີງຕາມຂໍ້ມູນ CDC. In other words, they were not picked up in the data because they tested positive for the virus after admission for another health reason.
More than 50% of kids under age 5 who were hospitalized had no underlying medical conditions, according to CDC data. Nearly a quarter of kids hospitalized in this age group ended up in the intensive care unit.
Nearly 2,000 kids under age 5 developed multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, after Covid infection. MIS-C is a condition in which multiple organ systems – the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or digestive organs – become inflamed. Nine kids under age 5 have died from MIS-C.
“These very clear data just decimate the myth that this infection is not life threatening in this age group,” said Dr. Sarah Long, a committee member and pediatrician at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.