A return to play is on its way for thousands of children in Southern California, according to Los Angeles County leaders who were on hand at Obregon Park on Wednesday, Nov. 3, to begin offering pediatric doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to kids ages 5-11.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the pediatric coronavirus shots last week, and a CDC advisory committee OK’d them Tuesday morning. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky gave final approval Tuesday afternoon, making the shots immediately available.
Los Angeles County received its first shipment of the vaccines the same day, and county officials gathered at a local park in East Los Angeles on Wednesday to mark the beginning of the vaccination effort for young children.
Not everyone was enthusiastic about the news. The California chapter of the Children’s Health Defense organization united at Santa Monica Pier to decry vaccination mandates with a protest march that coincided with the vaccination event at Obregon.
In Los Angeles, children attending Belvedere Middle School and Esteban Torres High School swung outside near the playground while their younger siblings and friends gathered inside the park’s center to become one of the first 5-year-olds to get the shots.
Some Southern California youth could not contain their excitement. Others, like Wren Nagata, had a harder time convincing his younger sister to join him in receiving a first dose.
“Now you’re going to be safer,” Pasadena resident Adam Nagata told his 5-year-old daughter at the vaccination event.
Less than 10 feet away, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer shared a similar message.
“It’s safe for each of us — for our children and for our grandchildren — and the vaccines save lives,” Ferrer said, speaking from a podium about the recently announced approvals.
Wren Nagata agreed in an interview shortly after he and his sister received their first shot.
The San Rafael Elementary School student encouraged everybody to come receive a shot “because it teaches your body a new virus and that’s important for your life,” he said.
Nagata also wanted other seven-year-olds to know the vaccine doesn’t hurt.
“Well, it hurts a little — but you can handle it and you are gonna feel good after,” he said. “And these are supportive people and they really do support you when you get a shot,” he added while others his age played cornhole in the background.
Joanna Nagata, Wren’s mother, acknowledged the family wasn’t always so eager to get vaccinated, which is a feeling shared by thousands of others in L.A. County.
“It was a hard decision. But then once I made the decision, I started to get excited about what it could mean not just for us — but for our community,” the mother of three said.
Ferrer encouraged other families with similar feelings to seek advice from those they trust.
Nagata noted she talked to a friend who is an epidemiologist and the family decided Tuesday to head in the next day to get vaccinated. “We thought if we were going to do it next week or the week after, then why not just do it tomorrow?”
Around the region
Ferrer explained Wednesday the county is using a color-coded vial system, “so that no provider will make a mistake. And as you can see, we are set up with a pediatric-only station at all of our sites,” she said from the podium Wednesday.
“We have well over 900 providers that are registered to vaccinate children, but we know they’re not all up and open today. And we know there are also some areas where we have lots of kids and not as many providers as we need in those areas,” Ferrer added.
So the county will have more than 250 mobile teams spread throughout the region starting this week, she said. She estimated 100 providers received vaccines today and another 200 to 300 will receive vaccines by the end of the week.
“Sites that receive doses today (Tuesday) might be able to start vaccinations as early as (Wednesday) afternoon or Thursday,” Ferrer told the county Board of Supervisors earlier this week.
“And by Monday we should have well over 250,000 doses in the county,” she said Wednesday, encouraging patience from the public as the system ramps up.
“We don’t anticipate scarcity, and we expect that there will be ample vaccines to meet demand,” she said prior to the event, noting there are about 900,000 kids aged 5-11 in the county.
Some attend Los Angeles Unified School District, which announced Tuesday, Nov. 2, it will begin offering COVID-19 vaccines to children ages 5 to 11 next week, though it’s not currently requiring students in this age group to get the shots.
“We are delighted to be able to offer voluntary vaccine access to students in this age group,” the nation’s second-largest school district said in a statement. “The COVID-19 vaccine is highly encouraged for children ages 5-11. However, it will not be part of Los Angeles Unified’s current student vaccine requirement.”
The district will begin deploying mobile vaccination teams on Monday to administer the vaccines to children as young as 5. Then, starting Nov. 16, LAUSD will have 13 school-based clinics offering the vaccines. The district will open the school clinics on select Saturdays as well. Information is available at achieve.lausd.net/studentvaccine.
Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District Superintendent Alex Cherniss said the district also intends to hold vaccinations clinics.
“One in two weeks and one in December,” Cherniss said, mentioning the clinics will be held at a central clinic. As a result, the Beach Cities Health District will host pop-up clinics starting Nov. 8 at Pacific Elementary, he added, noting 93% of MBUSD students older than 11 are currently vaccinated.
Just south, the city of Long Beach — which has its own health department separate from the county — will begin offering the pediatric doses Friday. The city estimated there are 43,900 kids aged 5-11 residing in Long Beach.
The city of Pasadena also has its own health department and will begin administering the Pfizer vaccines Nov. 8, according to city spokesperson Lisa Derderian.
Initial doses of the pediatric vaccine arrived early this week and additional vaccines have been ordered, Derderian said.
Pasadena Unified School District leaders said in a statement they are proud of the district’s strong efforts so far in making COVID-19 vaccinations accessible to employees, eligible students and community members.
Pasadena Unified board member Tina Fredericks recently published a petition to sway her peers to come up with a vaccination plan to increase vaccine rates prior to a potential holiday surge.
“The immediate issue is getting more shots in arms before the holidays when families — old and young — from across the county, state, country and globe converge,” Fredericks said Wednesday. “November is the calm before the storm. There will be a COVID surge.”
To date, Fredericks and her peers on the Pasadena Unified school board have yet to agree on the implementation of a mandate so district leaders aren’t expected to take action like their neighbors in the Alhambra Unified School District.
Alhambra Unified put 51 unvaccinated classified employees and five teachers on unpaid leave Monday, as per its board of education mandate that said employees must be vaccinated by Oct. 31.
The move means the district has a 98% vaccination rate with its 2,100 employees, according to Superintendent Denise Jaramillo, who is stoked that vaccines are now available for the little ones.
“That’s a shot toward normalcy for our schools, right?” she said Wednesday. “Vaccines, I think, are proven to be what’s best in ending the pandemic, so as the CDC has found that they’re safe for kids, I think parents will look deeply at themselves and decide if it’s right for their child or not. But it’s our shot at normalcy, I think.”
Jaramillo said the district is putting together a schedule of vaccination clinics for the kids that will be released Friday.
A couple miles east, Hacienda La Puente Unified School District leaders also recently put unvaccinated employees on unpaid leave.
District officials noted Wednesday they have held vaccination clinics in the past and it will continue to do so in light of this week’s news.
This is a positive development, said Jill Rojas, district assistant superintendent of human resources. “The board of education wants to keep all students and staff as safe as possible and so obviously the board’s belief is that the vaccine is the safest route so, obviously, we’ve in favor of it.”
The Mountain View School District, which closed four of its schools following the 2020-21 school year because of declining enrollment, also reacted quickly to the news this week. Officials said they have vaccination clinics planned in conjunction with its community healthcare partners scheduled for Nov. 17 and Nov. 20.
“The approval of the vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old provides another layer of protection for students, helping to keep them even more safe,” Superintendent Maldonado French said.
South Whittier School District Superintendent Gary Gonzales agreed in a separate statement Wednesday, when he said the district will hold clinics at local schools beginning at 1:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8 at Loma Vista Elementary School.
“This is a layer of protection for our students and other students who are around them and their families,” Gonzales said, highlighting how the unincorporated areas of South Whittier had one of the county’s higher levels of COVID-19. “We need to counter that,” Gonzales added. “We need to get as many vaccinations in our students and family arms as we possibly can.”
While the pediatric shots are roughly one-third of the dosage than the adult vaccine, the doses must be given on the same schedule — two shots administered 21 days apart. Ferrer noted that children must have a signed consent form from an adult to receive the shot, and some vaccination sites require them to be accompanied by an adult.
The pediatric shots will be offered under emergency use authorization, the same authorization given to the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, and to the Pfizer vaccine for kids ages 12-15. Pfizer’s vaccine has full federal approval for people ages 16 and up.
Appointments for vaccines can be made through the state’s MyTurn website, although many vaccination sites offer shots without appointments. Ferrer encouraged residents to call before showing up for a walk-in, however.
According to the local health director, there have been more than 79,000 COVID cases during the pandemic among children age 5-11 in the county, and one fatality. About 37,000 cases have occurred in kids up to age 4, also with one death, and more than 89,000 cases in those aged 12-17, with five deaths.
L.A. County recorded another 22 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, along with more than 1,600 new cases, although some of those new infections were the result of a backlog of testing results, health officials said. The daily rolling overage rate of people testing positive for the virus in the county was 1.2% as of Wednesday.
The 22 new deaths lifted the county’s pandemic death toll to 26,683. The county reported another 1,605 new cases, giving the county a cumulative total from throughout the pandemic of 1,496,593.
According to state figures, there were 662 COVID-positive patients hospitalized in the county as of Wednesday, up from 653 on Tuesday. Of those hospitalized, 152 were being treated in intensive care, down from 166 on Tuesday.
Across the county, 80% of residents age 12 and older have received at least one dose of vaccine, while 72% are fully vaccinated, according to the county. Among the county’s overall population of 10.3 million people, including those under age 12 who aren’t yet eligible for the shots, 69% have received at least one dose, and 61% are fully vaccinated.
Black residents continue to have the lowest vaccination rates, with just 56% having received at least one dose. That compares with 64% of Latino/a residents, 74% of white residents and 83% of Asians.
Younger Black residents have particularly low vaccination rates, with the youngest age group at 43% with at least one dose.
“I think that the decision to get vaccinated is tough,” Pasadena’s Adam Nagata added before his family made its way to the exit at Wednesday’s vaccination event. “But the relief that you feel is going to be good. And look, the kids are already asking questions like: Can we play inside? Can we go back to these places? Can we go to Disneyland? So the idea of normalcy is returning and this is the catalyst.”
“Now that vaccinations are open to children, we are coming closer to getting back to safe play and resuming all of the wonderful programming events and services that we all love,” said county Parks and Recreation Director Norma Garcia. “And that leads to a healthy life and cohesive communities.”
Staff writers Linh Tat, Mike Sprague, Robert Morales, Tyler Evains and Michael Hixon, as well as City News Service and The Associated Press, contributed to this report.