As school is starting all across the country, CNN reports that most children and teenagers are not vaccinated against COVID-19, and it is rising again with the highly transmissible BA.5 variant.
Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and other large cities will reopen next month.
In the past four weeks, 311,000 kids have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Over 14 million children have tested positive since the pandemic began.
A CNN report shows that less than half of children and teenagers are vaccinated. This means that the vaccine has been fully completed – it is at least two weeks since the second dose of Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech. There is only a tenth of these age groups that have received booster shots.
Children over the age of 6 months can be vaccinated, and those older than 5 years can have a booster.
According to the most recent CDC data, about 24 million kids ages 5 to 17 have been fully vaccinated, or about 45%. There are approximately 22 million eligible for a booster, but only about 5 million have received one.
“The uptake of Covid-19 booster shots among school-age children and teens has been slow, due in part to the fact that many have not completed their initial doses of the vaccine, CNN reported.”
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, approximately a third of parents with kids aged 5 to 17 will not vaccinate them.
