COVID shots are ready for children ages 5 to 11. Here’s how to get them in the Fresno area
As many as 110,000 children ages 5 to 11 in Fresno County — and about 236,000 across the central San Joaquin Valley — are now eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have received emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and a recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
The formal approval of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, at doses one-third the strength of those that have been available to adults since December 2020, came on Tuesday.
By Wednesday some providers in California were already making the doses available to children.
Health officials in Fresno County say they’re optimistic thousands of parents will quickly sign up to get their kids vaccinated. But they also acknowledge that after an initial surge of enthusiasm, there is likely to be a segment of households who will be reluctant for their children to get the shots.
Hours after Tuesday’s recommendation by the CDC, hundreds of parents gathered in a downtown church for a town hall about how to seek exemptions from a California state mandate for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Late last week, Fresno County Interim Health Officer Dr. Rais Vohra described the new availability of pediatric vaccinations as something that “is going to change a lot of people’s situations” ahead of holiday gatherings by ensuring that children have the same degree of protection as vaccinated adults.
“The fact that many, many thousands of kids will be at least partially vaccinated by Thanksgiving and fully vaccinated by Christmas, this is really a dream come true for thousands of families all across the Central Valley,” he said.
It may take a few days for the pediatric doses to become widely available for families, however.
Where to get shots
MyTurn: MyTurn.ca.gov, the state’s online system for finding places to get a coronavirus vaccine, announced it will begin accepting appointments for and providing information on walk-in clinics for ages 5 to 11 on Thursday. To find places where the shots are available for children, residents can visit MyTurn.ca.gov or call MyTurn at 833-422-4255.
Fresno County Health: Information is also available from the Fresno County Department of Public Health vaccine web page online or by calling the department’s immunization program at 559-600-3550.
Valley Children’s Hospital: The pediatric hospital in Madera County, just off Highway 41 north of Fresno, will begin offering vaccine appointments for children ages 5 to 11 starting as soon as Thursday. “We’re all ready to go,” hospital spokesperson Zara Arboleda said Wednesday. The appointments will be available through the state’s MyTurn system.
Retail pharmacies: A list of vaccination sites at health offices and clinics is available on the county’s website, as is a list of retail pharmacies such as CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and others where shots are available. It’s uncertain how quickly pediatric doses will be available at these pharmacies.
School vaccine clinics: Joe Prado, interim assistant director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said several school districts have already signed up to offer COVID-19 vaccine clinics at school sites in mid- and late November. “There is a heavy push right now to have vaccine clinics on school sites,” Prado said. “We’re going to see how many of our school districts are able to support those efforts.”
Pediatricians, family practice doctors: Children ages 12 to 17 have been eligible to get their shots for months. But Joe Prado, the interim assistant director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said Friday that only 15 pediatricians had thus far signed up to offer the two-dose Pfizer vaccine regimen to their younger patients.
“We have doses available. … We’re asking who’s going to be comfortable with vaccinating the 5- to 11 population,” Prado said. “I say ‘comfortable’ just because it’s not like an adult, where adults don’t squirm as much as kids.”
Prado said the county will work directly with smaller pediatric offices that may not want to handle or store hundreds of vaccine, to instead offer smaller volumes of vaccine – as few as five to 10 doses at a time – from stock stored in the health department’s freezers.
Vohra expressed hope that more doctors will join the county’s effort to give shots to kids. “We really need our medical community to step up. They helped tremendously when we started vaccinations for adults, and here we are with a major development having approval for children ages 5 to 11.”
“That’s going to add a tremendous amount to the number of eligible people across the state and here in the county,” Vohra added. We’re really going to need our pediatricians, family practice physicians, federally qualified health centers – really, everyone – to be on board and work with us so we can get these vaccines delivered as soon as possible.”
Doctor ‘strongly recommends’ shots
At Valley Children’s Hospital, which specializes in the treatment of pediatric patients up and down the San Joaquin Valley, “we strongly recommend that everybody who’s eligible be vaccinated, including now those children ages 5 and older,” said Dr. Karen Dahl, an infectious disease expert at the Madera hospital.
“The vaccines are safe and effective, and we know that from our experience with children 12 and older,” Dahl added. “There have been about 247 millino doses of Pfizer, and it’s been in use for almost a year. We know the safety profile, we know the side effects, and we know how effective it is.”
Dahl said the benefits of protecting kids with the vaccine far outweigh concerns over side effects that she said have been largely shown in clinical studies to be even milder than those experienced by older children and adults.
“There are so many benefits: the individual health of a child, and we know all the things we know that children have suffered in this pandemic, from the lack of socialization, childhood obesity, childhood depression,” she said. Vaccines for children offer an avenue for an accelerated return to “a more livable life, a return to school without disruption, help allow for family gatherings and celebrations” without fear of serious disease from coronavirus.
While children have typically been less prone to serious consequences from COVID-19, Dahl said that nationwide, 94 children have died from the disease.
“We continue to see children hospitalized” at Valley Children’s, she added. Over the past week, 13 children entered the hospital with COVID-19 infections, and the hospital’s emergency department continues to receive childhood patients with symptoms consistent with the respiratory disease.
Across the San Joaquin Valley, “our hospitalization rate is still quite high, and our vaccination rates are still quite poor,” Dahl said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is also recommending COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 5 to 11, and encourages its member doctors to do the same.
“Pediatricians’ role in promoting vaccination among their patient population and in their community is critical, especially among those at highest risk for severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19, as well as their household contacts,” the organization said in a policy statement.
“Parents, caregivers, and patients might have questions that need to be addressed related to the vaccine,” the organization added. “Pediatricians play an essential role in helping answer these questions, as well as in reducing existing disparities and addressing any barriers to accessing COVID-19 vaccine in their community.”
The circumstances in which parents should avoid the vaccine are rare, Dahl said: “Almost all health conditions are a reason to not hold off; those are reasons to vaccinate” because children with underlying health problems are at greater risk for complications from COVID-19.
“If a child has had a severe allergic reaction to a vaccine, that’s something to talk to your doctor or even an allergist about,” she added. “So many kids are vaccinated for so many other things, but if there’s been a serious reaction, that’s about the only time we would be thinking about not vaccinating.”
This story was originally published November 3, 2021 at 3:41 PM.
