‘We’re anxiously awaiting it’: COVID-19 vaccine for kids starts arriving in Fort Worth

The pediatric COVID-19 vaccine is now available in Fort Worth and throughout the U.S. for kids between the ages of 5 to 11.

But unlike the rollout of vaccines for adults, which became widely accessible in early 2021 and focused on large clinics that vaccinated hundreds or thousands of people in a day, local physicians and public health officials say vaccinating kids will be done on a smaller scale, and will heavily focus on a person most families know and trust: Their child’s pediatrician.

“Vaccinations are bread and butter pediatrics,” said Dr. Christina Robinson, the medical director of UNT Health Science Center’s Pediatric Mobile Clinic program. “We’re trying to make COVID vaccines standard of care, rather than the additional exception that people have to seek out to receive.”

“We ordered 600 doses, and we are anxiously awaiting it,” said Dr. Steven Levy, a pediatrician with the Lone Star Children’s Medical Clinic at La Gran Plaza.

Providers including Tarrant County Public Health and Cook Children’s Health Network have already received shipments of the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine. There are 204,000 children in this age group in Tarrant County, according to the public health department.

The final step in the approval process came Tuesday night, when CDC Director Rochelle Walensky signed off on vaccinating kids in the 5-11 age group. Walensky’s approval was the final step in a process of reviewing whether the vaccine was safe for children and whether it worked well in protecting them against COVID-19 infection.

The news comes as welcome relief to parents, health care workers and public health experts who have been waiting for months for the chance to protect young children against COVID-19 disease. Although children are much less likely to become seriously ill from SARS-CoV-2, studies have shown they can transmit the virus as easily as adults.

Public health experts have said vaccinating children is essential toward curbing the COVID-19, which has killed more than 70,000 Texans and 745,000 Americans as of Wednesday morning, according to state and federal data. In all, 94 children between the ages of 5 and 11 have died from COVID-19, according to the CDC, putting the respiratory disease as the 8th leading cause of death for this age group.

Now, the only age group not yet eligible to receive a vaccine are children under the age of 5.

As with the adult vaccines, providers expect an initial surge of families eager to get their children vaccinated. Eventually, they said, that rush of eager families will decline, and pediatricians will begin or continue to have conversations they’ve been having with their patients for years.

The pediatric Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine will be available at multiple different locations in Tarrant County, said Vinny Taneja, director of Tarrant County Public Health. Taneja sad he expected pediatricians’ offices and pharmacies to distribute the bulk of vaccines for this age group.

“I think pediatricians’ offices are probably going to be the lead, and then the pharmacies because they just have a wide network of locations,” he said.

Taneja said the public health department has also had talked with local school districts about mass vaccination days for students. No plans have been finalized yet, he said, but he expects more decisions on school vaccination clinics to be made once the supply is more widely available.

Fort Worth pediatricians who have signed up to provide COVID-19 vaccines to their patients say they are ready to give them the shot.

“We’ve been having promoting (the COVID-19 vaccine) for a long time, at least since September,” said Levy, whose clinic treats many Spanish-speaking families as well as children who are low-income or on public assistance programs like Medicaid.

Levy also treats a lot of patients with asthma, and said he thinks his practice’s vigilance in recommending the seasonal flu vaccine to those patients have helped.

“Those are really special patients that absolutely need the flu vaccine every year, so they’re used to getting that,” Levy said. “We don’t have a lot of anti-vaxxers, because that is not allowed in my practice.”

Robinson’s pediatric mobile clinic, which similarly treats a large number of patients who are low-income or don’t have insurance, will also vaccinate kids in the 5-11 age group, as well as older children and teenagers and their families. Robinson, who is also assistant professor in the department of pediatrics and women’s health at UNT Health Science Center, said pediatricians are well versed in listening to parents’ concerns and talking with them about vaccines and the disease they prevent.

The CDC said in a news release that shipments of the vaccine will begin arriving this week, and that availability of the vaccine should increase starting the week of Nov. 8. Results from the clinical trial for the Pfizer vaccine showed the vaccine was 90.7 percent effective at reducing symptomatic infection after kids had received two doses of the vaccine.

Some parents have questions about myocarditis, a rare side effect that has been reported in a small number of people age in the 12-29 age group after they received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. No myocarditis cases were reported in the pediatric trial. Public health experts who reviewed the safety data said a COVID-19 infection in kids was more likely to cause damage to the heart than the vaccine.

Before Walensky approved the vaccine Tuesday, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 14 to 0 in favor of authorizing the vaccine for kids ages 5 to 11. During that meeting, the panel said said myocarditis cases caused by COVID infections were more severe and lasted longer than myocarditis following a COVID-19 vaccination.

“Getting COVID is much riskier to the heart,” said Dr. Matt Oster a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Where can I get the vaccine for my child?

Start by calling your pediatricians’ office or your local pharmacy and ask if they are vaccinating children in the 5-11 group. Many health systems have not yet released their final plans for vaccinating this age group, but once they are made available the Star-Telegram will publish a list of where children can get vaccinated.

Send us your questions.

Have questions about the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine? Send them to cmccarthy@star-telegram.com or call or text 817-203-4391 and we’ll ask vaccine experts, pediatricians, and public health officials to answer them.