US hospitals, clinics and pharmacies on Tuesday began vaccinating the country’s youngest children against Covid-19, a milestone welcomed by parents desperate to protect children from the virus’s worst effects.
The rollout of millions of shots across the country was underway, 18 months after the elderly became the first group to be vaccinated.
Children aged six months to four years are not as at risk as adults.
But the sheer scale of infections has resulted in more than 45,000 hospitalizations and nearly 500 deaths in the 0-4 group since the pandemic began in America — outcomes that in many cases vaccination could have prevented.
“We’re super excited,” said Amisha Vakil, mother of two three-year-old boys who wore matching Spiderman t-shirts when they received their Moderna shots at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
One of the twins had three open-heart surgeries within his first five months.
“He’s very risky, so you know we’ve been living in a little bubble,” Vakil said. “Now he has a little armor that helps a lot.”
The moment was also welcomed by President Joe Biden, whose administration made 10 million shots of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines available to states after their approval last week.
“The United States is now the first country in the world to offer safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines to children as young as six months old,” Biden said, calling it a “monumental step forward.”
A handful of other countries and territories, including Argentina, Bahrain, Chile, China, Cuba, Hong Kong and Venezuela, previously offered Covid vaccinations for young children, but these did not include mRNA vaccines, considered the leading technology for the purpose.
The European Medicines Agency is reviewing the Moderna vaccine for use in children under the age of six and could follow the US decision.
– Born in Pandemic –
Many of the children admitted Tuesday were born after the pandemic began and had only known a life of limitations.
Anna Farrow, who came to the same hospital with her husband Luke, said she saw a new beginning for her son George at the age of three and Hope at the age of 10 months.
“It’s sort of the beginning of a normal childhood. And we’re really excited about that,” she said.
Across the country, in Needham, Massachusetts, Ellen Dietrick, an administrator at Temple Beth Shalom, prepared to welcome 300 children on the first day.
Daniel Grieneisen, the father of a three-year-old girl who got the vaccine, said: “It means we’re now just a few weeks away from bringing her inside and kind of getting back to our lives. it’s pretty exciting.”
Last week, a panel of experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration reviewed data from clinical trials involving thousands of children conducted by Pfizer and Moderna and found both vaccines to be safe and effective.
However, a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted in May found that only one in five parents of children under five was interested in getting them vaccinated immediately. A slightly higher proportion, 38 percent, said they would wait and see how well the vaccine worked for others.
New Yorker Rita Saeed, 29, said she’s concerned about side effects and plans to wait a few years before deciding whether to vaccinate her two-year-old son.
“To each their own, I think it should be optional, not mandatory,” she said, pushing her son through Central Park in a stroller.
Hal Moore, a 32-year-old teacher who lives in New York City, said he was “definitely relieved” to be able to vaccinate his 10-month-old daughter Lucy, but “we’ll probably wait until her next normal appointment.” to get it.”
In a sign of the ongoing politicization surrounding vaccines in America, Florida Gov. and possible Republican presidential nominee Ron DeSantis refused to give the federal government a mandate for vaccines for the youngest children, leaving private practices and parents to fend for themselves.
“These are the people who have no risk of getting anything,” he said at a news conference last week.
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