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On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) endorsed vaccination with the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years. What are some best practices for meeting the challenges of immunizing this younger age group?
Medscape Medical News spoke to several pediatric experts to get answers.
More than 6 million children and adolescents (up to age 18 years) in the United States have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Children represent about 17% of all cases, and an estimated 0.1% to 2% of infected children end up hospitalized, according to October 28 data from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
Physicians and other healthcare practitioners are gearing up for what could be an influx of patients. "Pediatricians are standing by to talk with families about the vaccine and to administer the vaccine to children as soon as possible," Lee Savio Beers, MD, FAAP, president of the AAP, said in a statement.
In this Q&A, Medscape asked for additional advice from Sara "Sally" Goza, MD, a pediatrician in Fayetteville, Georgia, and immediate past president of the AAP; Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, Houston, Texas; and Danielle M.
