SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) -- It was on Nov. 2 when the CDC signed off on allowing 28 million children in the U.S. ages 5 to 11 to get Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.
The shot, which is one-third the dose of the adult vaccine, was initially popular.
But, a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds vaccinations for the age group peaked in mid-November, and daily administered doses have declined dramatically ever since.
"There’s a tremendous amount of disinformation and misinformation widely available on the internet that tragically misinforms parents," said UC Berkeley Infectious Disease Expert Dr. John Swartzberg.
Swartzberg says the lack of enthusiasm on the part of parents is likely tied to a series of myths or misinformation -- the first being COVID is always mild in young children.
"Yes, children can just get a mild cold but some can get a flu-like symptoms and be pretty miserable, others can wind up in the hospital with really serious disease and some die and then there’s also the multisystem inflammatory condition that we see in children in that age group - which is not common but a terrible disease and there’s also we also see long COVID," Swartberg said.
Medical experts another myth is that vaccines will cause heart inflammation in young kids.
"First of all, it's not probable because they are not in puberty and it's related to testosterone," said UCSF Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong. "Secondly, you're more likely to get heart inflammation with COVID if you catch it than with the vaccine."
To date, less than 19% of 5 to 11-year-old kids in the U.S. have been fully vaccinated and Chin-Hong says going forward, that could prove to be a problem.
"That’s the best way out of this morass that we are in right now," he said. "We need to get as many people as immunized as possible, so we have confidence to move along with our lives with the lives we aspire to."
In terms of where California stacks up in all of this, according to the study, 23.5 % of eligible 5-11 year old’s are fully vaccinated in the state.
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/3GM54kN
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