Less than one million children in the US receive COVID-19 in the first week of shooting, White House projects Reuters

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By Ahmed Aboulenein and Alexandra Alper
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 900,000 U.S. children between the ages of 5 and 11 are expected to receive their first shot at COVID-19 by the end of Wednesday, the White House said as the government increased vaccinations for young children.
The U.S. began vaccinating Pfizer / BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine on Nov. 3, the last group to have the right to shoot to protect children, recipients and neighbors from 5 years of age against the disease.
“Although our program is fully underway this week, we believe that by the end of today, more than 900,000 children between the ages of 5 and 11 will get their first shot,” said Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 coordinator. talk to reporters.
Zients said last week that 15 million doses specifically formulated for that age group would be available this week and that the federal government had purchased enough supplies for 28 million children.
“The first few days of the forecast were difficult for people to find vaccination appointments for children,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior expert at the Johns Hopkins Health Safety Center.
“But it seems that it is becoming easier for children to get vaccinated because pharmaceutical chains, hospitals and other major organizations are increasing their ability to get vaccinated.”
The Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ 🙂 said in a statement that it has immunized more than 200,000 children against COVID-19 and booked hundreds of thousands of appointments in the coming weeks.
Los Angeles Children’s Hospital has inoculated 425 children since Nov. 3 and expects to vaccinate about 90 children soon, as it makes more appointments, he said.
The 900,000-figure figure comes from a White House analysis of data from pharmaceutical partners, some states and places available, Science said on Wednesday, adding that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not collected the full count.
“This is the beginning … we expect more and more children to get vaccinated over time,” he said.
COVID-19 is the largest preventable killer for children of this age group, with 66 children killed in the U.S. in the past year, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said in a speech.
He did not provide a timeline for when the CDC would have data on the number of young children vaccinated.
The seven-day average for all COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has been flat at about 73,300 in the past week, Walensky said, with the hospitalization rate as much as 5,000 a day. The U.S. seven-day death toll fell by 11% to about 1,000 a day.
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