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Nation poised to start vaccinating kids in large numbers

The country awoke Wednesday morning to some very good news.

Children ages 5 to 11 will soon be able to get a COVID-19 shot at their pediatrician’s office, local pharmacy and potentially even their school, the White House said Wednesday as it detailed plans for the expected authorization of the Pfizer shot for younger children in a matter of weeks, the Associated Press reported.

Federal regulators will meet over the next two weeks to weigh the benefits of giving shots to kids, after lengthy studies meant to ensure the safety of the vaccines.

Within hours of formal approval, expected after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory meeting scheduled for Nov. 2-3, doses will begin shipping to providers across the country, along with smaller needles necessary for injecting young kids, and within days, they will be ready to go into the arms of kids on a wide scale.

The Biden administration notes the nationwide campaign to extend the protection of vaccination to the school-going cohort will not look like the start of the country’s vaccine rollout 10 months ago, when scarcity of doses and capacity issues meant a painstaking wait for many Americans.

More than 25,000 pediatricians and primary care providers have already signed on to administer COVID-19 vaccine shots to kids, the White House said, in addition to the tens of thousands of retail pharmacies that are already administering shots to adults. Hundreds of school- and community-based clinics will also be funded and supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help speed putting shots into arms.

While children are at lower risk than older people of having serious side effects from COVID-19, those serious consequences do occur and officials note that vaccination both dramatically reduces those chances and will reduce the spread of the more transmissible delta variant in communities, contributing to the nation’s broader recovery from the pandemic, the article stated.

“COVID has also disrupted our kids’ lives. It’s made school harder, it’s disrupted their ability to see friends and family, it’s made youth sports more challenging,” U.S. surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy told NBC on Wednesday.

Murthy said the administration, which is promoting employer vaccine mandates for adults, is leaving the question of requirements for schools to local and state officials, but called them “reasonable.”

“Those are decisions on, when it comes to school requirements, that are made by localities and by states,” he told NBC’s “Today.” “You’ve seen already some localities and states talk about vaccine requirements for kids. And I think it’s a reasonable thing to consider to get those vaccination rates high. And it’s also consistent with what we’ve done for other childhood vaccines, like measles, mumps, polio.”

That particular age group, kids 5-11 years old, constitutes a fairly large chunk of our population that has not been able to receive the vaccine. This measure will go a long way to bring our country back to some sense of normalcy, as well as help to prevent the spread of particularly dangerous new variants of COVID-19.

The administration noted that kids who get their first shot within a couple weeks of the expected approval in early November will be fully vaccinated by Christmas. We are relieved to hear this news, as are parents all across the country.

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