At a White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing Wednesday, coordinator Jeff Zients said 10% of kids aged 5-11 who are eligible for the vaccine have gotten at least one dose. That covers at least 2.6 million kids. The video above shows clips from the briefing. 1.7 million COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered in the last week alone. That’s about double the pace of the first week after approval. Meanwhile, locations where kids aged 5-11 can get a COVID-19 vaccine dose increased 50%, from 20,000 across the country to 30,000.
“There are plenty of children, adolescents and otherwise who clearly get infected, get symptomatic disease, and some even go onto long COVID,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said in the briefing. “So there’s a really good reason to optimally protect younger individuals.”
Zients went on to say the administration expects the pace of pediatric shots to pick up in the coming days. Also on Wednesday, first lady Jill Biden held an event promoting kid vaccination with the singer Ciara.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration took steps to make billions of dollars available to drugmakers to scale up domestic production of the COVID-19 vaccine. Those extra doses would be shared with the world, in order to address the massive disparity in vaccine availability between wealthier and poorer countries.
According to an analysis by an international aid and advocacy organization, wealthy nations have administered more than 173 million booster shots. Meanwhile, lower-income countries have only administered about 32 million first doses. That covers just 4.7% of people living in those low-income countries.
“The goal of this program is to expand existing capacity by an additional billion doses per year, with production starting by the second half of 2022,” Zients said Wednesday. The Biden administration hopes the enhanced manufacturing capacity, through support for the company’s facilities, equipment, staff or training, will by mid-2022 allow more COVID-19 doses to be shared overseas as well as help prepare for the next public health emergency.
Under the new initiative, the Department of Health and Humans Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is asking pharmaceutical companies who can make mRNA vaccines to bid for an investment in scaling up their manufacturing. There are no firm agreements yet with Moderna or Pfizer, the two companies behind America’s mRNA vaccines, to accept the investment.
These developments came on the same day Moderna announced it has filed for Emergency Use Authorization of its booster shot for all adults. Currently, the Moderna booster is only approved for seniors, adults who live in long term care facility, adults with underlying medical conditions, and adults who work or live in high-risk settings.
Moderna’s filing comes a week after Pfizer applied for a similar clearance for their booster shot. An FDA decision on that is expected this week, ahead of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel meeting on Friday.