Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many parents have been patiently reminding us: Don’t forget about our youngest children. But time and again it felt like the youngest, most vulnerable children in our society were being forgotten and left behind. This included the development and testing for vaccines for children ages 6 months to 5 years of age.
While we understandably must be careful with all vaccine testing, especially for young children, it felt like an extremely long wait until these vaccines became available, a full 18 months after the initial roll out for adults. But now, for the most part, it seems that everyone has moved on.
While the White House, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American Academy Pediatrics (AAP) and even Elmo have been promoting vaccination, the world seems otherwise quiet. The movement to vaccinate children 6 months to 5 years of age has been slow, and uptake has been reportedly low. There are already many challenges to vaccinating this population of kids with these vaccines. First, they require three doses separated by a total of at least 11 weeks for the Pfizer vaccine and two doses separated by at least four weeks for the Moderna vaccine. The dosages are different, the two options cannot be easily compared, there’s a slight difference in the age range for each, and more. In short: it’s complicated.
Second, this population of children accounts for only 6 percent of the U.S. population, almost 1-in-5 live below the federal poverty line, and rates of population, poverty and insurance vary widely from state to state.
Third, there will likely be far fewer locations for children this age to get vaccinated.
While many of us have benefited tremendously from vaccination, we must remember that we have an entire population of young children that are unvaccinated and have not had that opportunity yet.