WASHINGTON, D.C. (NBC) – Tuesday, the CDC will meet to decide whether to approve Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, a key decision that would open up a critical new phase in the fight against the pandemic. The decision could soon be in parents’ hands.
A CDC committee will meet for the final signoff on Pfizer’s vaccine for children coming as soon as Tuesday night.
The White House says pediatric vaccine doses, bottled in those special orange caps, are already out the door—7 million of them now that the FDA recommended authorization. In the next week, that number would go up to 15 million, according to the White House.
The children’s dose is one-third the size of the adult version, given as two shots three weeks apart, which means children who are vaccinated in the coming days would be fully inoculated by Christmas.
For some parents it’s a long time coming.
States like Virginia are already rolling out plans to make getting the shots as easy and efficient as possible.
Eventually, vaccination efforts could move to schools.
But access to the vaccine is not what concerns Nicole Frehsee-Mazur, a mom of two young children. She said she had an adverse reaction herself to the shot and only got one dose. She said, “My gut instinct is to just protect my kids at all costs, and one may argue vaccination is a way of protecting them. And it sure is, but the unknown of the shot is scary.”
Nicole does not rule out vaccines for her children, but she wants to wait. “I don’t think I’m going to wait too long,” she explained. “I’ve always said that I will vaccinate them. I just don’t necessarily want to be first in line.”
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