Kids Can be Vaccinated and International Travel Resumes
There is optimistic news on the COVID-19 front in spite of the US having suffered 47 million cases, 3.3 million hospitalizations, 752,000 deaths, hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses, millions of lost jobs, widening educational gaps, and social/cultural upheaval. The road to normalcy has been long but yet the journey is not over.
The first piece of good news is that there is now a vaccine authorized for our children between the ages of 5 and 11 years. This opens the door for 28 million more Americans to be vaccinated. The Pfizer- BioNTech vaccine for this age group is a dose that is one-third of the dosage which is used for adolescents 12 and over and for adults. Smaller needles are used for these younger children as well. The human trials revealed the vaccine to be 91% effective in this age group. The side effects were temporary and not serious, such as sore arm, fever, or achiness. Recall that the Pfizer vaccine is the only one authorized for people between the ages of 5 and 17. Both the Moderna and the Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccines are available for people 18 years of age and over. Since the Emergency Use Authorization was granted four days ago over 300,000 of our younger children have received their first dose the vaccine. Their second dose will be due approximately three weeks after the first. The appropriate dose of the vaccine is provided free by the federal government to anyone living in the USA independent of their insurance or immigration status.
In spite of children experiencing less frequent and milder acute problems from COVID-19, there remain ample reasons for them to get vaccinated. For instance, at the current time, 25% of our country’s new COVID-19 cases are in children. There have been over 700 deaths of children as a result of COVID-19. One out of every seven infected children suffer from long COVID symptoms. Thousands of COVID-19 infected children have developed the multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) which can have serious involvement in the brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, skin, and gastrointestinal organs. Additionally, more than a million children have been affected by the over 2,000 school closures caused by the highly contagious Delta variant since the beginning of the school year. Since we all want to have our children and the rest of us out of masks, getting them vaccinated is essential.
A second news-worthy event announced on 11/8/21 is that the US lifted significant international travel bans. It has been over eighteen months since restrictions which severely limited travel from our northern neighbor Canada and across the southern border of Mexico. So many other tourists, relatives, and businesspeople have been held back from getting into our country. The travel ban, which involved more than 33 countries, resulted in losses approaching $300 million and over a million American jobs. In an effort to continue to protect Americans, vaccination and testing requirements for these travelers are in place. Fully vaccinated travelers who have proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of travel will be allowed entry. Americans not fully vaccinated and children under 18 will need proof of a negative coronavirus test within one day of travel. There are exemptions and other specifics which can be found at www.CDC.gov. Airline and hotel reservations are already filling up as the holidays approach. Although improvement is happening already, a full recovery of international travel to pre-pandemic levels will not occur until 2024.
Both of the newsworthy items detailed above further demonstrate that vaccination is the mainstay of our getting back to normalcy. The repetitive telling of this story is beginning to have a positive affect on the African American and the Latino communities. The racial gap in vaccination compared to our fellow White Americans is narrowing. Unfortunately, the rate of COVID-19 illness, death, hospitalizations, as well as vaccination between red and blue states continues to widen. The red state political skepticism is affecting them adversely. We can only hope that the political dogma will be pushed to the background as these vaccinations for children prove to be safe and effective. Children need to be allowed to benefit from the helpful science.
