Howard Gamble
WHEELING — Local health officials are currently in a holding pattern with regard to pediatric doses of new COVID-19 vaccine boosters designed for children as young as 5 years old.
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized Pfizer vaccines aimed at both the original virus and omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants for children 5-11 and Moderna vaccines for children 6 and older to combat the same combination.
Wheeling-Ohio County Health Administrator Howard Gamble said that health departments are now waiting for the Centers for Disease Control and for the state health department to sign off on the pediatric dose, after which point vaccines can be pre-ordered for distribution from local health departments.
This waiting period is expected to take a little more than a week after the CDC hands down its authorization, Gamble said Thursday.
“We know it’s been approved; the CDC will review it, the state health will concur. For us, we’re waiting for the ability to do pre-orders,” Gamble said. “Once it gets approved, I like to get it as soon as we can, and what I hate is that they approve everything and then we get our orders in.
“Because you have to (go through) the ordering system, that vaccine has to be ordered and then come in, we’re looking at about a week, week and a half after the CDC approves this. It doesn’t take long for state health departments to concur, but it’ll take about a week and a half to make it to counties and to some pediatric offices.”
Some pharmacies are not licensed to distribute vaccines to children under 18, and so county health departments and some pediatricians — locally, Cardinal Pediatrics at The Highlands — are the likely first line of pediatric vaccine distribution, Gamble said.
The Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department had previously utilized schools and other public spaces to hold vaccine clinics. Gamble said the department was open to doing so again, as the hours for walk-in vaccines are from 9-11 a.m. and 1-3 p.m., during school hours. However, such clinics are usually held during days where schools aren’t in session, or during certain evenings.
“Working with schools before, it was either a day off where kids didn’t have school, or an evening where we went to a school that had good parking or good access,” Gamble said. “Some of those were successful, some were not; it didn’t really matter, we were just there and we made it available.”
Gamble said the department was open to the possibility of holding clinics on free days, and that it was a matter of coordinating with private, public and parochial schools in the county.
“We’ll have to wait and see — we’ve done a number of school clinics for teachers, service personnel, and staff when they didn’t have school on an in-service day, we were there. … Doing something for the kids on a special day, we’d have to wait and see, and then with our three school systems … try to set something up for the younger kids.”
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October 17, 2022 at 12:56PM
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