(Above, Inset) Dr Mark Ghaly, Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency. (Siliconeer/EMS)

At a joint Ethnic Media Services briefing, moderated by Regina Brown Wilson, Executive Director of California Black Media, held Nov. 8, Dr Mark Ghaly, Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, answered questions related to the rollout, efficacy, and safety of COVID-19 vaccines for individuals ages 5-11.

As the holidays approach, it’s more important than ever to ensure our families are vaccinated and our community is protected against this deadly virus. This conversation was hosted by the ‘Vaccinate All 58’ and ‘Stop the Spread’ COVID-19 public awareness campaigns, as California continues to roll out COVID-19 vaccines for ages 5 to 11. After the FDA, the CDC, and the Western States Scientific Advisory group gave the green light last week.

The state understands that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ when addressing healthcare concerns and hopes this briefing to be able to answer questions that one might have.

“It is exciting to close out this first week where we’ve had the permission from the FDA and CDC, the clearance to begin providing vaccines to five to eleven-year-old Californians. We’ve received hundreds of thousands of doses already in California. We anticipate getting by the end of the second full week, almost 1.8 million doses of the 5 to 11 approved vaccination,” said Dr Ghaly.

Currently there are 500 providers in our community, growing to 4,000 eventual providers who will provide pediatric, 5 to 11 vaccinations to young people. These are the big health systems, Kaiser’s dignity, the local federally qualified health centers, many of the places where communities receive care, the pharmacy, are preparing to provide these doses to young people.

“It’s only come after months of availability of the data trials that included over 4,000 young children, 5-to-11, to make sure what is now a lower dose.

“The adult dose of Pfizer is 0.3, the pediatric 5-to-11 dose is 0.1. So, it’s a third of the dose that adults are receiving; a third of the dose that even adolescents 12 and over older are receiving. It’s a lower dose, a different formulation, and it’s available specifically for this 5-to-11 population,” said Dr Ghaly.

“The trials that were done to make sure that this vaccine is safe and effective at this dose were robust. They came together in rapid fashion in order to address this important pandemic, recognizing that vaccines are the way through the pandemic and allowing us to get five-to-eleven-year-old Californians, who represent nine percent of our entire population,” Dr Ghaly.

“Whether it’s young Black children, or Latino children, or Asian Pacific Islander children, we know that we have quite a few five-to-eleven-year-olds, at nine percent of our entire state. Now is a chance to get the same protection that so many older Californians have had for many months, that have protected them and kept our communities safe,” said Dr Ghaly.

As a pediatrician, a father of four, what do I think; what am I doing; what am I talking to people in my own community about?

“Three of my kids are under the age of 12, not a single person in my household is without their first dose. Half of us are fully vaccinated, the other half are getting fully vaccinated. They have received their first shot in the two-shot series,” said Dr Ghaly.

What are we doing this for?

“We’ve had hundreds of thousands of cases among young people. Sixty thousand young people, five-to-eleven, have been hospitalized in our nation. We’ve lost more kids to COVID than we do to other vaccine preventable diseases in our nation. In California, we’ve lost over 30 young people to COVID and any additional death of a young person is unacceptable if it’s preventable,” said Dr Ghaly.

According to Dr Ghaly, getting young people vaccinated is going to help protect families, elders. It is also important for young people as it will protect them from the long-term complications of COVID infection.

Q: Should kids get the flu shot at the same time they receive their COVID 19 vaccine?

A: They certainly can. A lot of practices are encouraging folks to get them together. Young people might have some soreness in their arm, they might have some low-grade symptoms such as fever with vaccines, but these are not reasons to not get the vaccination altogether.

Q: How can parents feel reassured that COVID 19 vaccine is safe for kids of all backgrounds?

A: We have a large national study that looked at five-to-eleven-year-olds, and they’re very good at making sure that it’s a representative population, making sure that we have young people from all regions of the state, or the nation; all races and ethnicities; young people with pre-existing conditions; as well as young people without; to make sure that it’s a representative sample.

As a pediatrician, I always encourage that parents and families connect with their trusted clinical provider to get the questions answered so that they can go in to getting their young person vaccinated with a great deal of confidence and reassurance that this is the right thing to do.

Q: How would you convince those parents or families whose religious beliefs are in opposition to the vaccine for them and their children?

A: If you have a religious belief against the COVID vaccine, I do wonder if those same beliefs uphold with other vaccines. If you’re a caregiver to a child who’s received other vaccines for school or for other illnesses that we know we can prevent with vaccinations, I’d ask you know how is this one different. Why suddenly are we concerned about the COVID vaccine in a different way, and those are conversations that we really urge people to have talk to their faith communities so that they can come back with accurate information, a complete picture to help make the determination.

The other thing I would say is we often talk about the COVID vaccine as opposed to having no intervention or having nothing else happen. The truth is we’re talking about protecting young people and all Californians with COVID vaccine versus allowing people to get infected and we know that even if you don’t have the worst consequence of hospitalization or dying from COVID, there’s still long-term repercussions that we’re learning about. My hope is that we always think about the global protection that we’re hoping to provide young people. It is a risk to go unvaccinated, in fact, we feel more confident that if you aren’t vaccinated or protected you will eventually be infected with COVID. It is such a transmissible virus that is really all around our community at different times during the year, one that we’re all very worried about increasing in numbers and volume in our community as we enter the winter months.

Q: Will children require boosters eventually?

A: We don’t know yet. Because of how the pandemic is evolving with new variants and the concern for even more transmissible versions of the COVID 19 virus, we may at some point require to get a booster shot for kids 5-to-11 or those who are 12 and older. Right now, we are feeling very confident about the level of protection over the next many months for young people to get their two-shot series with the 0.1 depths, but just as we have done for older recipients of the vaccine, there’ll be ongoing investigation and studies to make sure that that strength of immunity that we depend on to prevent getting an infection or a severe infection is provided to young people and down the road that may require an additional dose.

Q: Are there plans to host vaccination sites such as at schools?

A: It’s something we’ve been planning in partnership with our healthcare partners our local health jurisdiction partners and frankly schools across the state and soon probably a week out from now the middle of the month we should see many more vaccination sites connected to schools but not just for students, but for students and their families, for the community at large. Most Californians who are interested in getting a booster should go ahead and get one soon.

On the efficacy of the trails of COVID 19 vaccine, Dr Ghaly said, “In the 5-to-11-year-old group even though the size of the trial group was only about 4,000, they didn’t see any cases of myocarditis or pericarditis. That said, they have seen it in older teenagers and so we take that very seriously. One important feature is that the 5-to-11-year-olds have a lower dose which may, we’re going to learn over time, contribute to the fact that we’re not seeing cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in that age group. Young people who get infected often have many more significant outcomes than those who get vaccinated so when young people get infected with COVID-19, we have seen long-term complications of the inflammatory response whether it’s on your cardiovascular system, your endocrine system, or your neurologic system, I think we’ve seen some cases of influenced or impacted neurologic problems for young people, some psychiatric problems. We’ve had plenty of young people admitted to the hospital for respiratory problems as a result of COVID so it’s often we have to look at what are the consequences of the vaccine but not compare it to nothing happening but the fact that many young people who get infected do have a negative outcome and have some problem for weeks, months, and we hope, not years down the road after getting infected by coping.”

Q: There’s often conversation and concern about the impact of the vaccine on people’s fertility and I hear this more and more coming up on even young people, five to eleven, will it impact their fertility?

A: To date, and this has been looked at with a great deal of attention, there has been no connections to fertility issues for adults, either men or women, or young people as well. That’s one important myth that I think is important to debunk. The American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians have put information out on the safety of getting the vaccine.

Q: Over the next 6 to 12 months how many young children does the government project to successfully vaccinate? What numbers in your eyes would look like success, what happens if we can’t convince skeptical parents to vaccinate their children?

A: We have roughly 3.2 million five-to-11-year-olds in California, so success to me is getting as many of those young people vaccinated as possible because usually if you’re willing to vaccinate your young person, you’re willing to get vaccinated yourself so that means we’re making great success at getting adults and young people, all eligible Californians to become vaccinated.

I have shied away from setting specific goals because I’ll always want us to do as well as we can. We want to knock on the door of 80-85 percent, so that we make sure no matter what COVID throws our direction, whether it’s a new variant, or people who can still get infected despite having had the vaccine – because it’s been many months we want to make sure that we’re doing all we can to wrap a thick blanket of protection around our state.

We are working hard all the time to make sure our healthcare delivery system can take care of people who become infected and have bad consequences from COVID, other respiratory illnesses and other health issues that take you into the hospital, we will continue to make sure and work hard to prepare those systems to take care of as many Californians that need care as possible, but as we saw over last winter, we can’t afford to get our guard down. We must continue to support those hospital systems to do what we can in communities and that starts with getting ourselves and our families vaccinated as quickly as possible so we don’t see people having bad health consequences because the healthcare delivery system is overwhelmed and can’t take care of all Californians that need it.

Dr Ghaly ended with a message for the ethnic media, “We’re going to do what we can to deliver a strong message on why getting vaccinated is important deal with all of the counter messages to vaccinations as much as we possibly can lean heavily on all of you to help us get that message out.”