COVID-19 vaccines for youngest children likely to arrive next week in Henrico

For parents of young children who have been patiently awaiting the day when their youngsters will become eligible for COVID-19 vaccines, that wait is nearly over.

Children between 6 months and 5 years old could be able to receive their first doses of either a two-dose Moderna regimen or a three-dose Pfizer regimen sometime next week, Richmond and Henrico Health Districts Nurse Manager Amy Popovich said Thursday. That timeline, though, is dependent upon final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (whose Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted Wednesday to recommend both vaccines by a 21-0 vote) and subsequently the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Virginia Department of Health.

RHHD officials anticipate that parents of about 20% of the eligible children in the two localities will want to have them vaccinated immediately, Popovich said. In Henrico, which counts nearly 20,000 children between 6 months and 5 years old, that would amount to about 4,000. Another 40% of parents are likely to take a “wait-and-see” approach, Popovich said, citing national surveys that concluded the same.

Most likely will be vaccinated at their pediatricians’ offices, Popovich predicted, but some will get their shots at a pharmacy, at an RHHD event or through the agency’s “Doses on Demand” program, which delivers the vaccine directly to homes by request. The earliest young children could receive a vaccine at a public RHHD event would be June 21, Popovich said.

“We do think that there will be available supply for parents who want their kids to get it,” she said. “Between pediatricians and pharmacies and our events, we do think that in the first week or two, folks who are wanting vaccinations for their littlest will be able to get them.”

The Moderna vaccine is 25 micrograms per dose (or one-fourth the amount of an adult dose), while the Pfizer vaccine is 3 micrograms per dose (or one-tenth the amount of an adult dose).

Some officials believe that the Pfizer vaccine could become a four-dose vaccine for the youngest group of children, given that its clinical tries showed lower efficacy (effectiveness) levels. Moderna’s vaccine fared better, with efficacy rates of 37% for children 2 to 5 and nearly 51% for those 6 months to 23 months old.

For the past three weeks, Henrico has been in the “high” COVID-19 Community Level designation, according to the CDC, which updates levels for each locality in the nation every Thursday evening.

But COVID cases in Henrico have been decreasing slightly during that time (from an average of about 300 per 100,000 people to 260, as of June 12), though new virus-related hospitalizations have remained about the same (10.5 per 100,000 people).

The CDC uses three metrics to determine whether a locality is in the “low,” “medium” or “high” community level:
• number of cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days;
• number of virus-related hospitalizations per 100,000 people in the past seven days;
• percentage of staffed inpatient hospital beds in use by COVID patients.

For localities with more than 200 new cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days, the “high” classification is triggered when either the hospitalization rate during that same period of time surpasses 10 or more per 100,000 people or when the percentage of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID patients exceeds 10%. (The latter percentage in Henrico is currently just 3.3%, up about one-half a percentage point in three weeks.)

On Thursday, VDH Commissioner Colin Greene released new guidance indicating that anyone who is exposed to COVID-19 but who previously had the virus within the past 6 months or who is “up to date” on his or her vaccinations does not need to isolate or quarantine. That advice conflicts with the current directive from the CDC, which encourages people exposed to the virus to quarantine unless they have had COVID within the past 90 days.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we will retain the 90-day standard for higher-risk situations, including healthcare workers, staff and residents of long-term care facilities, correctional facilities, and homeless shelters,” Greene wrote in a statement.