The COVID-19 vaccination for children under five started rolling out on June 21, and it got mixed reactions in Florida. While some parents whose children have immune disorders are relieved of the new vaccine rollout, other groups, such as Publix, Florida's largest private employer, announced that they would not be offering the newly approved vaccine for children ages four and under.
As per Tampa Bay, the State leaders of Florida also questioned the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. The move is contrary to the recommendations of the country's top health agencies and medical associations. Florida is the only state that did not preorder vaccine doses for children under 5.
Mixed reaction in Florida
After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allowed the vaccines for Americans younger than five years old, NBC News said that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued three authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines - Pfizer and Moderna. After the FDA approval, the White House pledged to ship 10 million doses to states, pharmacies, and community health centers.
In Florida, however, the state surgeon general did not recommend the vaccine for healthy children. Hence, state officials did not preorder the vaccines. The White House warned that the move could delay the delivery of the vaccines to medical providers.
While Publix did not have a vaccination rollout for kids under five, Walmart and Consumer Value Stores (CVS) offered vaccination services.
Mom Turner Smith said that she was planning to have her children vaccinated at the pediatric clinic at Johns Hopkins Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, but the hospital received a limited number of vaccines. She will have to wait a bit longer as the hospital cannot offer vaccination until Friday. She added that she felt like crying as the state is not taking into consideration the vulnerability of the kids that are not healthy.
Meanwhile, some Florida parents in Clearwater, Lutz, Sarasota, and Tampa posted on Facebook the celebration of their kid's vaccination.
Side effects of the vaccine
Health experts who studied Pfizer and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials for kids six months to 11 years old at Cincinnati Children's Hospital noted that the common side effects of the vaccine include pain, swelling, or redness at the injection site.
Other common side effects were fatigue or sleepiness for systemic symptoms. Some children exhibit irritability, fussiness, loss of appetite, headache, abdominal pain or discomfort, enlarged lymph nodes, diarrhea, or vomiting. But experts assured everyone gets better quickly based on the clinical trials.
According to CNN, the kids were slightly more prone to develop a fever with the Moderna vaccine, noting that it occurred with about a quarter of the trial participants, while for Pfizer, it was for less than 10 percent. Most of the fevers were mild, with less than one percent of all the participants in the trial reaching 104 degrees.
As fevers are not common, doctors advise parents not to pre-treat a child by giving them a fever-reducing medicine before the shot. However, if the fever develops, parents can give ibuprofen or acetaminophen.
Myocarditis or the enlargement of the heart was noted in adults but not in kids during the vaccination trial.
Ashish Jha, the Response Coordinator for The White House, assured that the vaccines are "exceedingly safe."
