Young U.S. Children Will Start Getting Vaccines, Though Hurdles Remain

“We’re very excited,” said Rachel Lumen, a lawyer in Kent, Wash., and the mother of Athena, who is almost 3, and Ozette, who is 7 months old. “The faster it happens, the faster we’re able to get out there.”

Last week, after multiple delays, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines for children as young as 6 months, expanding immunization to almost all Americans.

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“It marks an important moment in the pandemic because it was the last group, the last demographic, that had not had the opportunity to keep themselves maximally safe,” said Dr. Bob Wachter, the chair of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s not likely to turn the tide in terms of where we are generally in the pandemic, but for the parents of those kids, it’s an important watershed.”

The start of vaccination for young children is a milestone, but that group never faced as much risk from Covid-19 as older Americans, and this phase of the nation’s immunization effort has been met with mixed emotions. President Biden is to make remarks about the new phase of the U.S. vaccination effort on Tuesday about 3:45 p.m. Eastern time. He and the first lady, Jill Biden, will also visit a vaccination clinic in Washington D.C. in the afternoon.