COVID-19 inoculation rates among the youngest population with an authorized vaccine vary between 0.1 percent and 21 percent depending on the state, and physicians are concerned, The Washington Post reported Sept. 18.
Since the pediatric vaccine was authorized in June for children as young as 6 months old, 4.4 percent of infants younger than 2 and 7.1 percent of toddlers between 2 and 4 years old have received at least one dose, according to national CDC data. Barely 1 percent of infants and 2 percent of toddlers are fully vaccinated.
It's been a slow crawl to vaccinate the age group for months, and the "wait and see" approach seems to have extended past summer vacations.
Weeks after children returned to school, some infectious disease experts are surprised by the meager vaccination rates and point to unclear information about the shots.
"We haven't done a good job explaining the long-term developmental consequences of long COVID for younger children," Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, a pediatric and infectious disease physician at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine, told the Post. "And future coronavirus variants are a very likely possibility."
Experts agreed that the danger of long COVID-19 in children is still a big question — and should be a worry for parents with unvaccinated children.
"An infant or toddler won't be able to tell you if they've had fatigue or constant headaches, so you wouldn't know if something was lingering even when the obvious physical symptoms subsided," Zachary Rubin, MD, a pediatric allergist in Illinois, told the Post.