Kids vaccination drive kicks off

Hartford Hospital in Connecticut started injecting children with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine minutes after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky gave final emergency authorization. Walgreens and CVS are taking appointments as early as Saturday, and minivans lined up with children aged 5 through 11 whose parents wanted them to get vaccinated before school on Wednesday morning. Pfizer expects to ship 11 million pediatric doses within the next several days. Since the pandemic started, more than 8,300 children have been hospitalized for COVID-19, and 94 have died. Serious infection is rare in young children, though roughly 5,000 have contracted an inflammatory disease linked to coronavirus infection.

How are parents responding? Some parents said they are relieved young children in their families can be protected from the virus and attend school normally. But a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed two-thirds of the 1,519 parents polled plan to wait or refuse vaccines for their kids. Several said they want more research about long-term effects and risks, which clinical trials were too small to study.

Dig deeper: Read Lauren Dunn’s report in Schooled about remote learning struggles for elementary school students.