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State vaccination site now lets parents book shots for their younger kids
By adamg on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 1:22pm
Appointments for children between 5 and 11 are now available on the Massachusetts Covid-19 vaccination finder.
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Looks like mostly a week out or more
across multiple channels -- pediatrician, clinics, and pharmacies.
If the kids vaccine is just a
If the kids vaccine is just a smaller dose of the adult vaccine, why is the kids vaccine scarce when the adult vaccine is not?
Because...
...pediatric needles, dose packaging, etc. And a week out is not "scarce".
Yeah. They need special BIG SCARY NEEDLES for kids.
Seriously, needles these days are a lot smaller than the ones my pediatrician used, and it's not because I'm bigger now :-)
It isn't scarce?
But it's a completely different product, which needs to be shipped out to the providers. The contents of the vials are the same, but the vials themselves, the labels, are different. Like how other child sized medicines are the same as the adult ones, but packaged differently because the doses are different.
It's a safeguard not only to ensure that the correct doses are given to the different age groups as intended, but also for quality protection, which in turn protects the next patient receiving the vaccine. The vials are designed to provide X number of doses; that's X number of (sterile) syringes piercing the seal, Y amount of time the vial sits at room temp rather than kept cold, etc.
Got an appt. in 2 days
Small sample size but we called yesterday and made an appt. for Saturday already with our pediatricians office.
I think this is great news!
I wonder if like the MMR vaccine kids will be required to have this shot if their parents want them to attend Boston Public Schools?
That wouldn't surprise me.
And by January we should have a percentage figure of fully vaccinated kids to work with.
Eventually
It will likely have to receive full approval before that, just like the adult vaccine was mandated after it got full certification.
Vaxfinder not entirely accurate though
My kid (a minor, but old enough for adult Pfizer vaccine) had an appointment at Whittier St for a COVID vaccine last week. Whittier texted saying it was cancelled. I called and the scheduler at Whittier St told us the state website was letting "kids" make appointments there but they hadn't actually received the pediatric product, so they were cancelling all COVID appointments for "kids."
I explained, repeatedly, that the 5-11 vaccine is a different Pfizer product that's just been released and 12+ can get the usual Pfizer product they've been giving all along (just different rollout for 18+, then 16+, then 12+, but same product the whole time), but she kept telling me she would be cancelling "all appointments for kids, because the state website is wrong that we have the vaccine for kids."
I hung up and called the nursing line, where a knowledgeable exasperated nurse said to just come in and ask for her and she'd schedule it for right then, because otherwise this person would see <18 and cancel it.