(Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration’s vaccine booking portal will begin scheduling shots for kids age five to 11 by the end of the week, after they were cleared Tuesday evening.
Some pharmacies and doctors’ offices are already booking appointments and the vaccines.gov website will augment those efforts, Jeff Zients, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 coordinator, said in a briefing on Wednesday. He repeated an earlier warning that the kids’ inoculation effort will need until next week to fully ramp up.
“We’ve been planning for this moment and we are prepared and beginning the week of November 8th, our program will be fully up and running,” Zients said.
Biden will speak about childhood vaccinations later Wednesday, according to an announcement from the White House. The speech will be Biden’s first since Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost Virginia’s governor race, a blow that hints at trouble for the president’s party ahead of next year’s mid-term elections.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky authorized vaccines for younger children -- a one-third dose of the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE shot -- in a statement late Tuesday, after an advisory panel recommended it unanimously.
“Please know we have thoroughly reviewed all of the available safety, immunogenicity and efficacy data before recommending this vaccine for your child,” Walensky said at Wednesday’s briefing. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said he will vaccinate his own five-year-old as soon as possible.
The Biden administration says it’s ordered enough vaccines for all 28 million kids in the age group, though a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last week found that less than a third of parents plan to immediately inoculate their kids.
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Advertisement