WASHINGTON -- The federal government on Wednesday took a final step toward making the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine available to children as young as 12, paving the way for millions of adolescents to get the shots, and making it easier for state and local officials to reopen schools and summer camps.
The decision was hailed by President Joe Biden "as one more giant step in our fight against the pandemic," and he called on parents to get their kids inoculated. "The bottom line is this: A vaccine for kids between the ages of 12 and 15 ... [is] safe, effective, easy, fast and free," he said. "So my hope is that parents will take advantage of the vaccine and get their kids vaccinated."
The vote Wednesday afternoon by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an independent group of medical and public health experts, was 14 in favor, with one recusal. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky signed off by day's end, giving the green light for the two-dose vaccine to be used in 12- to 15-year-olds.
"Getting adolescents vaccinated means their faster return to social activities and can provide parents and caregivers peace of mind knowing their family is protected," Walensky said.
[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage » arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]
The Food and Drug Administration cleared the vaccine for emergency use in that age group Monday, saying it was safe and effective at the same dose that is being given to those 16 and older.
Biden said that 15,000 pharmacies are ready to start vaccinating adolescents as soon as today, saying most of those pharmacies are no farther from families' homes than their neighborhood schools. Children will be able to receive their two Pfizer shots in different places if they go elsewhere this summer, he said.
The vaccine's cold-storage requirements and large lot size -- 1,170 doses is the minimum order -- make it more challenging to be distributed immediately to doctors' offices. But Biden said officials are mobilizing to find ways to equip doctors' offices, including pediatricians, so they can give the shots to patients arriving for checkups, or other services. He described these efforts as enabling parents and children to consult the doctors they trust.
Vaccinating children is a key to boosting the level of immunity in the population, and reducing hospitalizations and deaths, experts say. As more adults are vaccinated, adolescents 12 to 17 years old are making up a greater proportion of infections, accounting for 9% of cases reported in April, according to CDC data presented at the meeting. That's even higher than cases among people 65 and older, now that many people in that age group are vaccinated.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKq4u_GUH-k]
"Older children can have severe disease from covid-19 infection," said Kathy Poehling, a pediatrics professor at Wake Forest University and member of the advisory panel, who described a teenager with covid-19 who suffered a heart attack as a result of the disease, and who survived. While deaths are uncommon in children, she and others noted that covid-19 deaths are one of the top 10 causes of death for children.
"Many parents and adolescents want to be protected by being vaccinated. And I'm so glad we have the vote to enable them to do that today," she said.
Some states, including Arkansas, Delaware and Georgia, did not wait for the CDC decision, opening up eligibility on Tuesday, a day after the FDA authorized the vaccine for younger teens. But many other states and providers were waiting for the recommendation; some insurance plans won't reimburse providers for the administration fee without the CDC sign-off.
Vaccination of a significant number of adolescents could also allow U.S. schools and summer camps to relax masking and social-distancing measures recommended by the CDC, and help speed a return to normalcy. There are almost 17 million adolescents in the 12- to 15-year-old age group in the United States, accounting for about 5.3% of the U.S. population and almost 27% of the population younger than 16, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Biden said his administration would launch a public education campaign about the vaccine and partner with a variety of organizations to encourage children to get vaccinated.
Sara Oliver, a CDC medical officer and the lead of the panel's covid-19 working group, said officials plan to promote adolescent vaccination as quickly and equitably as possible.
The plan is to expand vaccinations down to 12-year-olds at existing sites as part of an "early summer sprint" in May and June, followed by increased access in June and July that will include children's hospitals and large health-care providers serving adolescents. A back-to-school campaign will kick off later in the summer and include school-based vaccination programs and pharmacies after the start of the school year.
COVID DEATHS FALL
The move to vaccinate adolescents is made as covid-19 deaths in the United States have tumbled to an average of around 600 per day -- the lowest level in 10 months -- with the number of lives lost dropping to single digits in well over half the states and, on some days, hitting zero.
Confirmed infections have fallen to about 38,000 per day on average, their lowest mark since mid-September. While that is still cause for concern, reported cases have plummeted 85% from a daily peak of more than a quarter-million in early January.
The last time U.S. deaths from the pandemic were this low was in early July of last year. The number of people with covid-19 who died topped out in mid-January at an average of more than 3,400 a day, just a month into the biggest vaccination drive in the nation's history.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University, said that vaccinations have played a crucial role even as the nation struggles to reach herd immunity.
"The primary objective is to deny this virus the ability to kill at the rate that it could, and that has been achieved," he said. "We have in effect tamed the virus."
About 45% of the nation's adults are fully vaccinated, and nearly 59% have received at least one dose, according to the CDC.
VARIANT THREAT
Meanwhile, scientists told a House panel Wednesday that coronavirus variants will pose a continuing threat to the United States, with the potential to spread quickly and blunt the effectiveness of vaccines.
"We must ensure that the tools we use to detect, treat, and forecast the virus are keeping up with emerging variants," said Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., the chairman of the House subcommittee that heard the scientists' testimony.
Last month, the White House announced almost $2 billion in funding to track coronavirus variants. The plan calls for large-scale sequencing of virus genomes, as well as research to understand how mutations alter the biology of viruses.
The funding is needed urgently, said Salim S. Abdool Karim, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
"Over the coming months, we can reasonably expect new variants to emerge that are able to escape vaccine-induced immunity, because the virus is being put under pressure from wide-scale vaccination," he said.
The world is not doing enough to track such variants, said Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.
"These global and national genomic surveillance gaps severely limit our ability to detect new and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, and should be considered as a threat to U.S. public health," he said.
In addition to sequencing more genomes, scientists said that they needed ways to share their data quickly. That data should include more than just mutations carried by viruses, according to Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Rivers said that scientists also needed a way to learn about the health of people after they get infected with variants.
"We must be able to observe how the variant behaves in individuals and populations," Rivers said.
CALIFORNIA MASKS
On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state would stop requiring people to wear masks in almost all circumstances on June 15, describing a world he said will look "a lot like the world we entered into before the pandemic."
"We're not wearing face coverings. We're not restricted in any way, shape or form from doing the old things that we used to do, save for huge, large-scale indoor convention events like that, where we use our common sense," Newsom said in an interview.
California has required people to wear masks in public places since June 18. The guidance requires people to wear a mask when gathering indoors with people who are not vaccinated. Fully vaccinated people can meet indoors without wearing a mask. They can also not wear a mask outdoors, except when attending large gatherings such as sporting events, festivals and concerts.
Last month, Newsom announced that he would lift most of the state's coronavirus restrictions on June 15 if the state's coronavirus case numbers continued to improve. But at the time, Newsom and state public health officials said the state would not lift the mask mandate after June 15.
Tuesday, Newsom appeared to change his mind about that, saying the state would only require masks "only for those massively large settings where people from around the world, not just around the country, are conversing."
"We'll make guidance recommendations, but no mandates and ... no restrictions on businesses large and small," Newsom said.
Information for this article was contributed by Lena H. Sun and Fenit Nirappil of The Washington Post; by Heather Hollingsworth, Stephen Groves, Sophia Tareen and Adam Beam of The Associated Press; and by Carl Zimmer and Apoorva Mandavilli of The New York Times.
