In some pediatric practices, the shots are already in the arms. Children’s Medical Group, a private practice in Atlanta, requested a dose as soon as it was allowed and received a first shipment on Monday, a June holiday. They started getting vaccinated at lunchtime. “We’ve had a lot of demand,” says Jennifer Shu, a practicing pediatrician and editor at the American Academy of Pediatrics. “We have even received calls from patients from other practices whose doctors do not carry any vaccine against Covid for this age group.”
As this suggests, and as parents are reporting on Twitter– availability varies. This may be due to these low-absorption predictions; Internships and hospitals may not want to invest in freezing space and staff time if they do not expect much interest. But it may also be due to a bureaucratic hurdle that has haunted Covid vaccination since its earliest days. Unlike almost all other vaccines, this one does not come from a commercial distributor; it is dispensed by the federal government and channeled through state health departments. Therefore, in order to receive it, health care providers must complete the CDC documentation. This is true even if they are already involved in other government programs, such as Vaccines for Children (known as VFC), which guarantees vaccinations for families without private health insurance.
“The participation of providers who usually participate in the VFC program has been pretty good,” says Marcus Plescia, a physician and medical director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “Doing it in private practice sites has been a slower process. They are not used to being part of government-run vaccine programs. Some of them don’t want to do this because of the paperwork and the hassle.”
The childhood vaccination program may also be hampered by another long-standing problem: the size of the vaccine vials. Each has 10 doses and, once thawed and opened, should be used within 12 hours. “Pediatricians, in particular, do not like to waste the vaccine. “They see it as a precious commodity,” says Hannan. .
Another complication is that all of Covid’s protections to date, including vaccination, have been unevenly distributed. Half of these 19 million children under the age of 5 are children of color, according to a Kaiser analysis; 41 percent depend on Medicaid for insurance and 4.5 percent have no insurance. Because public places, pharmacies, and schools are not available to help with younger children, there will be additional pressure on federally-qualified community health centers to reach children near them. “We know from all sides of the release that some of the most disadvantaged groups were not vaccinated at the same rate from the beginning,” says Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policies for the Kaiser Foundation. “They are children who are vulnerable for many different reasons, and the last thing anyone wants is for them to suffer disproportionately or have worse access to this intervention.”
At this point, experts expect a slow absorption, rather than no uptake. Parents whose children have early childhood visits, or summer appointments to prepare them for sports, may choose to wait a few months instead of taking a special trip. This has its advantages and disadvantages: it leaves vulnerable children in Covid longer, but normalizes the vaccine as one of the many vaccinations they receive in their early years.
For some parents, the problem is not programming, but trust. They will need extra patience on the part of people in the medical system as they work through the concerns, perhaps just as they worked for themselves last year. “At their next appointment with the pediatrician, they can ask for a conversation, which is different from calling the office” to arrange the dam, says Angela K. Shen, a visiting research scientist at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital who is studying attitudes. before vaccination. “You may need multiple conversations with your brother, sister, pharmacist, and pediatrician. These middle-aged people are the ones that public health messaging strategies will want to pursue, to answer their questions non-paternalistic way “.
