Wednesday 22 June 2022 05:08 PM Children under five begin to receive Covid vaccines in 'the only country in the ... trends now
Americans children under the age of five have begun to receive the COVID-19 vaccine - with President Joe Biden exclaiming Tuesday that the nation is the only one in the world to jab children as young as six months old.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were approved by both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for children between six months and four years old last week, and their administration into children began this week.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 2.7 million shots have been delivered to vaccine providers around the U.S., with up to ten million doses to be delivered as part of this first batch.
President Joe Biden, who has long been a proponent of expanding America's COVID-19 vaccine eligibility, remarked Tuesday that America was the only country in the world vaccinating children as young as six months.
It comes as Covid cases in the U.S. remain steady at around 100,000 per day, and deaths remain in the 300 per day area.
Pictured: A four year old girl in New Orleans, Louisiana, winces as she receives a shot of a COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday - the first day the shots became eligible
Pictured: A 16-month-old child in Salt Lake City, Utah, is held by her mother and embraces her stuffed animal and she receives the COVID-19 vaccine
Pictured: A four-year-old girl reacts in agony as she receives a shot of a COVID-19 vaccine in New Orleans, Louisiana on Tuesday
'We're the only country in the world doing this right now,' Biden said at a vaccination clinic in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, while taking pictures with some in attendence.
'This is a great day for you all. Thanks for the example you are setting.'
Uptake for these shots may be limited, though, especially during the early stages of their rollout.
Polling for the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only about one in five parents of children under age five (18 percent) are eager to get their child vaccinated right away, while a larger share (38 percent) say they plan to wait a while to see how the vaccine is working for others.
About four in ten parents of children under five are more reluctant to get their child vaccinated, with 27 percent saying they will 'definitely not' get their child vaccinated and 11 percent saying they will only do so if they are required.
There was also limited demand for the shots last time the FDA made them eligible for a younger age group, children aged five to 11.
According to official CDC data, only 30 percent of Americans in the age group are fully vaccinated, half of the 60 percent between ages 12 to 17. Minors in general have low vaccination rates, with the youngest adults having vaccine uptake of around 80 percent.
Pictured: A four-year-old child in New Orleans, Louisiana who had just received a shot of the COVID-19 vaccine shows relief after the needle is removed from his arm
Pictured: A two year old girl in Seattle, Washington, is comforted by her mother ahead of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine on the jab's first day of eligibility
Pictured: A three-year-old child in Los Angeles California, braces himself to receive the COVID-19 vaccine on the first day of the shot's availability
Former FDA Chief Scott Gottlieb, who now serves as a board member at Pfizer, said over the weekend that he predicts demand for the jabs to be low at first.
'I think it's going to be a little bit more of a slow rollout relative to what we've seen in past rollouts with the other age groups,' he told CBS' Face the Nation.
'There are going to be pharmacies that are vaccinating children. CVS is going to move it into their pharmacies, but they're only moving in to the pharmacies with advanced care providers with their MinuteClinics.
'Maybe around children's hospitals, you'll see some clinics stood up, but most people are probably going to get vaccinated in their pediatricians' offices, and it's going to take a little bit more time to get the vaccine into those local settings because it's more difficult to vaccinate a
