Few U.S. children have received Covid shots despite being available since June

Covid shots for young kids arrived in June. Few have received them. Health officials worry that the lackluster vaccination uptake might leave the nation vulnerable to coronavirus clusters in the fall and winter. Sabrina Malhi Washington Post

In June, when the Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of coronavirus vaccines for children younger than 5, physicians expected apprehension among parents — after all, 4 in 10 parents with young children said they would definitely not get their youngsters vaccinated, according to a July Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

But doctors and public health experts never expected there would be this little interest in vaccines for young children.

Even in places with strong pro-vaccine sentiments, few young children have received shots, including in the District, which has the highest percentage vaccinated. In D.C., barely 21 percent of children 6 months to 4 years old have received one shot, and just 7.5 percent have received both doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi — which occupy the bottom of the list — the rates are even more dismal: less than 0.2 percent. Health officials worry that the lackluster vaccination uptake might leave the nation vulnerable to coronavirus clusters in the fall and winter.

Just under 325,000 young children are fully vaccinated nationwide, according to the CDC. While some parents blame a lack of access, experts believe misinformation surrounding the shots for younger children is driving vaccine hesitancy.

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Peter Hotez, an infectious-disease physician and pediatrician at the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said he’d hoped vaccination rates would improve as the months went by, but they remain stagnant.

“I thought maybe it was just the summer, and people were traveling,” Hotez said.

Nationwide, vaccination rates with a single dose increase with the age of children. Children younger than 5 have a 6 percent single-dose vaccination rate; for children 5 to 11, it’s six times as high, at 38 percent; and 12-to-17-year-olds have the highest vaccination rates among youths, at 70 percent.

The low vaccination rates among the youngest children reflect inadequate communications about the shots, according to Hotez.

“We haven’t done a good job explaining the long-term developmental consequences of long covid for younger children,” Hotez said. “And future coronavirus variants are a very likely possibility.”

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