Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is now vaccinating eligible children and young adults ages 12 to 20, along with their caregivers, at a Fulton County vaccine site near the Atlanta airport.
Children’s nurses are available onsite to help alleviate anxiety in patients receiving the vaccine, according to the hospital system. They are administering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the only vaccine currently authorized for children. The site is the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC). To make an appointment, go to the Children’s Vaccine Scheduler Link here.
Patients under the age of 18 must have a guardian with them in order to get vaccinated.
The Food and Drug Administration recently authorized the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in adolescents ages 12 to 15 years, a critical step in raising the level of immunity and getting the pandemic under control.
The expansion of vaccine eligibility marks a major development in the country’s vaccination efforts, offering protection against COVID-19 for more children during summer activities and raising hopes of a return to something more like normality in schools in the fall, at least for older students. The action makes immunization accessible to all high school students and many in middle school, where students typically start sixth grade at age 11.
In Georgia, 585,882 youths, or 6% of the population, fall in this 12-to-15 age group, according to 2019 Census estimates.
The FDA clearance comes as an amendment to the existing emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine granted for adults late last year and then expanded in late March to those as young as 16.
“This is a big deal,” said Dr. Hugo Scornik, a Conyers pediatrician and president of Georgia’s chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics in a recent interview. “This can be transformative for schools and frees kids to do more activities they love like sports, and this gets us to closer to that level of immunity we need to get to.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Scornik said while children who catch the coronavirus tend to have milder symptoms than adults, they can, in rare instances, have severe complications. Children can also get sick and spread the disease, so vaccinating young people can break the chain of infection. People 17 and under in Georgia make up 11% of confirmed cases, 2% of hospitalizations and 0.05% of confirmed COVID-19 deaths, according to an analysis of state data.
The FDA said it determined the benefits of the vaccine for those 12 years of age and older outweigh the known and potential risks. The FDA said the most commonly reported side effects in the adolescent clinical trial participants, which typically lasted one to three days, were pain at the injection site, tiredness, headache, chills, muscle pain, fever and joint pain.
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