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Date: 2/22/2022
AMHERST – While COVID-19 vaccines have been approved for children as young as 5 years of age, many wonder when younger children will be eligible. When that time comes, what would be the best option for children so young?
Dr. John Snyder of Amherst Pediatrics said so far for those eligible, the vaccine rollout has been fairly smooth at his practice.
“From our practice’s perspective we started by administering vaccines in our office. We did switch to providing vaccines for our patients,” Snyder said. “This was still when it was the 12 and up range.”
Amherst Pediatrics stopped offering in-office COVID-19 vaccines not long after because of two factors: the vaccine was becoming more accessible to the public and the desite to avoid any situation in which a vaccine would be wasted if appointments were not met by the vials’ expiration after 10 days, according to Snyder.
Snyder said overall, the practice is doing well with getting vaccines out to their patients in the older age groups.
“Like we’re seeing around the country, we’re doing pretty well with the older age groups. Overall with the eligible patients we’ve done fairly well,” Snyder said.
According to data from Amherst Pediatrics, 73 percent of patients in the 12 to 23 age group have received the first dose of the vaccine, and 67 percent have been fully vaccinated pre-booster.
Looking closer in the numbers, the 16 to 18 age group is the highest vaccinated group with 82 percent having received their first dose and 78 percent receiving the second. The data begins to dip, however, for ages 5 to 11, the latest age group to become eligible for the vaccine.
“The age group that is pathetically low is the 5- to 8-year range. If you include the young kids, its not great,” Snyder said.
Only 41 percent of 5- to 11-year-old patients have received their first dose, and only 38 percent have received their second. While still a lower percentage, according to the CDC’s Data Tracker 28 percent of 5- to 11-year-olds have received at least one vaccine dose as of Jan. 18 of this year. The town of Amherst in this context is in a good spot with young children’s vaccination rates compared to the nation’s numbers.
Snyder said overall the practice is at about a 63 percent vaccination rate for the first does and 56 percent for two. While these numbers only reflect their practice, they are slightly below the Amherst vaccination rate of 88 percent, according to amherstcovid19.org.
One obstacle accounting for the low rates in young children is general concerns about vaccines in young kids, according to Snyder.
“I think parents overall are more fearful of vaccines in their young children ironically. Even though traditionally, for a vaccine for preventable diseases, it’s the young kids you want to protect,” Snyder said. “Its this sort of strange contradictory kind of concept. I think it just goes hand in hand with the overall reluctance or hesitance or fear of vaccines that persists in the community at large.”
Snyder added he believed that with COVID-19, hesitancy in vaccinations for young children has been a met with a barrier of misunderstanding especially with the group being the most recent to be approved for the vaccine.
“I think psychologically for people it means, ‘well we have less info about that age group’ even though that’s not true,” Snyder said. “I think overall in general people feel that the vaccine was rushed into production because we needed it. That is untrue. This vaccine went through the same rigors as all other vaccines have gone through. The reason this process was faster by a long shot is because unbelievable resources were put into the production of this vaccine unlike we’ve seen in history.”
While misinformation has played a role in creating doubt across the board in getting vaccinated, there is still one more group that has not been approved for the vaccination still and that is ages five and below.
In mid-January, White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was hoping the Food and Drug Administration would approve the Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine for children under 5 years old within the next month. While there is no timeframe for when it would be approved, this will only continue to be a discussion over the next year as discussions for vaccinating children continue.
Dr. Snyder said he would guess the vaccine for children 5 years of age and under comes sometime in 2022 but had no real feel on an exact time to expect it.
“My gut feeling is that the booster recommendation will go down to the lower ages, the five and up age group, before we get infants or any under five vaccine approved,” Snyder said.