As this suggests – and as parents report on Twitter – availability varies. This may be due to those preconceived notions. Clinics and hospitals may not want to invest in freezer space and staff time if they do not expect much interest. But it could also be due to a bureaucratic hurdle that requires Covid vaccination from its earliest days. Unlike almost any other vaccine, this one does not come from a commercial distributor. distributed by the federal government and channeled through state health services. So, in order to receive it, healthcare providers must complete the CDC documents. This is true even if they are already involved in other government programs, including Vaccines for Children (known as VFCs), which guarantee vaccines for families without private health insurance. “The involvement of the providers who usually participate in the VFC program has been quite good,” says Marcus Plescia, physician and chief physician of the State and Territory Health Workers Association. “Introducing it to private practice websites was a slower process. They are not used to participating in government vaccination programs. “Some of them do not want to do this because of the bureaucracy and the inconvenience.” The children’s vaccination schedule can also be hampered by another long-standing problem: the size of the vaccine vials. Each contains 10 doses, and once thawed and opened, it should be used within 12 hours. “Especially pediatricians do not like to waste the vaccine. “They see it as a valuable asset,” says Hannan. “Asking them to order enough vials to have a vaccine available every day, when they potentially give one person a vaccine and discard nine doses because you do not have nine more children — that’s a challenge.” Another complication is that all Covid protections so far, 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 rely on Medicaid for insurance and 4.5 percent are uninsured. As public websites, pharmacies and schools are not all available to help younger children, additional pressure will be put on community and federal health centers to reach out to children. “We know from every corner of development that some of the most disadvantaged groups were not vaccinated at the same rate early on,” said Jen Kates, director of global health policy and HIV at the Kaiser Foundation. “These are children who are vulnerable for many different reasons and the last thing one wants is to suffer disproportionately or have worse access to this intervention.” At this point, experts hope for slow absorption, rather than non-absorption. Parents whose children have short visits to good kids or summer appointments to prepare them for sports may choose to wait a few months instead of taking a special trip. This has advantages and disadvantages: It leaves children vulnerable to Covid for longer, but normalizes the vaccine as just one of the blows they receive in their early years. For some parents, the issue will not be planning, but trust. They will need extra patience from the people of the medical system as they deal with their concerns, perhaps as they worked through them for themselves last year. “At their next appointment with a pediatrician, they may ask for a chat – something other than calling the office” to arrange the vaccine, says Angela K. Shen, a visiting researcher at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital who is studying the attitude across the street. in vaccination. “They may need a lot of discussions, with their brother, their sister, their pharmacist, and their pediatrician. “These people in the middle are the ones who will want to pursue public health messaging strategies to answer their questions in a non-paternalistic way.”
