Coronavirus vaccinations for children 5 to 11 years old are expected to begin Thursday in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday. City officials said there were more than 230,000 pediatric doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine already on hand in the city or on their way.
While other places in the country began vaccinating younger children Wednesday morning, New York City was still waiting for official clinical guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for health care providers, before setting in motion its distribution plan for pediatric vaccine doses, Dr. Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner, said at a news conference. The guidance will include a safety checklist, he said, to make sure that providers take every precaution.
“We are expecting that sometime today,” Dr. Chokshi said, “and once that final piece is released, we will have all of the information that we need.”
The New York State Health Department said on Wednesday that providers could go ahead without waiting for the federal clinical guidance, but that it was also fine to wait for it to arrive.
As a result, New York parents planning to get their children vaccinated at the earliest possible moment may still face some hurdles. As of Wednesday morning, the city and state vaccine finder websites were not yet showing appointments for children younger than 12. The Walgreens pharmacy chain, however, was allowing parents to schedule appointments for doses, as it is doing around the country.
The city’s public hospital system said it expected its online booking system for pediatric doses to go into service Wednesday night. And by the end of the week, the first of almost 1,500 pediatricians and family doctors across the city will begin administering vaccine doses to younger children, city officials said.
New York State set up a special committee more than a year ago to provide an extra level of scrutiny for federal vaccine decisions. That committee met Tuesday night and signed off on administering pediatric doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to children aged 5 to 11. But the associated paperwork, which includes safety guidelines, typically takes about 24 hours to be disseminated, said Dr. Bruce Farber, the chief of infectious disease at Northwell Health and a member of the committee. He said the paperwork delay did not have to be an impediment to starting vaccinations.
“It has been approved, and will be up and running in a very short period of time,” Dr. Farber said.
Assuming the guidance arrives on schedule, parents and children in New York City will be able to walk in to city-run sites and sites run by the city’s public hospital system on Thursday for shots. Appointments, however, are recommended. Appointments for next week at Walgreens locations in the city were being snapped up quickly.
“Our children are precious to us,” Mr. de Blasio said Wednesday. “Let’s get them vaccinated, let’s keep them safe, let’s move out of the Covid era once and for all.”
The city’s distribution plan will go into full swing next week. Next Monday, the city will begin hosting one-day vaccine clinics during school hours at each of its 1,070 schools that enroll children aged 5 to 11. A parent or guardian must either be present or give verbal or written consent for a child to receive a shot.
Children 5 to 11 are now becoming infected at a higher rate, relative to their numbers, than any other age group in New York City, according to city data, a trend that arose with the start of school and peaked in late September. City officials said they now hope for the same success vaccinating them that they have seen with older children, 78 percent of whom have been immunized so far.
“This is a significant turning point in our city’s battle against this pandemic,” said Mark Treyger, the chair of the City Council’s education committee.
Joseph Goldstein contributed reporting.
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