Children between six months and five years old are now eligible for the COVID-19 vaccines offered by Pfizer and Moderna. In Arizona, that’s nearly 400,000 additional eligibilities.
According to the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS), the vaccine was made available on Monday, June 20. To find locations where a child under 5 may be vaccinated, the ADHS vaccine finder will be updated to include vaccinations for this age group.
In a press release, ADHS interim director Don Herrington applauded the news:
We’re excited to be able to protect preschoolers and toddlers from severe illness and potential long-term side effects from COVID-19. Vaccination also will reduce the changes that kids will spread COVID-19 to older individuals and others at greater risk of hospitalization and death.
The vaccine should also protect against multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a rare condition that occurs in children several weeks after COVID-19 infection that can lead to severe organ damage and even death. According to the Wall Street Journal, CVS Health will offer vaccines at locations with Minute Clinics, and Walgreens said that it would begin offering the vaccine to children 3 and older at about half of its stores beginning June 25.
On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that all children in the requisite age group with Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage would be eligible for vaccination without cost-sharing.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra applauded the announcement in a press release:
We know that many families are trying to decide what is right for them, and we encourage everyone seeking further information to talk to a doctor or health care provider to get the facts… We now have another opportunity to get ahead of this pandemic and protect our nation’s youngest kids, and the Biden-Harris Administration will continue working every day to get as many people protected from COVID-19 as possible.
The American Medical Association also released a statement to the nation’s anxious parents, in support of the vaccine studies’ findings:
We urge parents to get their children vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as they are eligible. While there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, we know many parents and families still have questions. We encourage parents to speak with their child’s physician and review trusted resources, such as getvaccineanswers.org, to get the information they need to make an informed decision.
Hospitals and COVID-19
The American Journal of Managed Care looked at the potential for employers to implement premium surcharges on unvaccinated employees on business health plans. Employers see this approach as similar to those for tobacco use, arguing that the premiums help to support higher hospitalization expenses incurred by the employees’ status as unvaccinated. However, critics of these surcharges generally point to data from other health-contingent premium programs that show they regularly fail to impact individual behaviors.
Representatives from Valleywise Health Medical Center, formerly the Maricopa County Hospital, illustrate the past two years at the hospital in a story for AZCentral. Valleywise lost four employees to COVID-19, converted the children’s emergency department into a COVID-19 intensive care unit, experienced 457 patient deaths from the virus and saw over 16,200 positive tests in the past two years of the pandemic.
Banner Del E Webb Medical Centers and Laboratory Sciences of Arizona (LSA) have received the 2021 UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence Top Global Winner award, which was created to recognize exceptional projects that highlight problem solving and the novel use of laboratory science. The team of Del Webb and LSA members employed a number of process-improvement techniques to improve lab-result times and improve patient diagnoses, according to a Banner press release. From Meghan Shapiro, chief operating officer for Hospital Laboratory Operations, LSA:
Our laboratory team collaborated with their peers, kept patient care priority, and thought innovatively to find a solution that improved turnaround time, patient care, and communication.Thank you to the clinical laboratory, nurses, physicians, quality team, and clinical care operations for making this process a success.
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