South Florida hospitals expect more COVID-19 vaccines for kids

MIAMI – South Florida pharmacies at Walgreens and Winn-Dixie are already administering the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 5 to 12.

Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Broward County expects to have the vaccines by Nov. 19th. Holtz Children’s Hospital in Miami-Dade County expects to have the shots in the coming weeks.

“We will be administering it right here at the Jackson main medical campus and also at our urgent care site as well,” Dr. Audrey Ofir, a Jackson Health System pediatrician.

The traveling University of Miami Health’s pediatric mobile clinic will be administering free vaccines to students at eight schools in November. Ofir said parents need to be proactive.

“We know for a fact that they can get quite sick. They can have significant respiratory issues, kidney disease, heart disease,” Ofir said.

The vaccines are different for children who are age 12 and older, so the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that if the child turns 12 between the two doses, they must not increase the dose.

COVID FACTS

• Minors can get sick and can spread the virus to others.
  
• Minors with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk for severe illness and could require hospitalization.
  
• Minors with COVID-19 can develop a multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare but serious condition. Half of the minors with MIS were aged 5 to 13.
  

PANDEMIC DATA

• More than 60,330 people have died of COVID-19 in Florida since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University.
  
• The CDC reported 576 minors have died of COVID during 2020 and 2021 so far in the U.S., including 49 minors in Florida. Thirty out of the 49 dead were girls.