Children are going to have to be masked during this time.
And really that is the safest thing that you can do
for your children,
in addition to getting yourself vaccinated.
You can't stop life,
but what you can do is make sure your children
are as safe as possible,
and that means putting masks on you and your children,
making sure again they're using very good hand hygiene
and you're also making sure that they're social distancing.
I think the biggest issue right now for children
is trying to normalize things for them
as much as we possibly can,
and I think the best way to do that
is to create a safe environment
where they can be part of activities
in the way that we can keep them safe.
My children are going to go to in-person school,
and I do think children should go to in-person school
because that social, emotional need to be around others,
to just be in the classroom where they can interact
with their teachers directly instead of online, I think,
and their friends and work in group settings.
I think these are all great benefits
and important things for your childhood education.
So I'm in favor of them going back to school,
but I think it just has to be done in a safe way.
If now, where there's much available testing
that is for children
and it's free, actually, for K-to-12 schools now.
So I think if we take advantage of them,
we can hopefully get children out of the classroom
who are sick earlier and then prevent any transmission
that could be possible in those settings.
The issue with the vaccine in the kids less than 12 -
the FDA asked both the MRNA vaccine makers,
Pfizer and Moderna, to ensure that they got more data,
so enrolled even more children,
and are following those children
for at least four to six months,
before they would approve this
or authorize this vaccine in that age group.
Pfizer thinks that this will occur for them
by the end of September.
So if that occurs, a few weeks later,
we would anticipate that the FDA would review the data
at least in the 5- to 11-year-olds
and perhaps in the 2- to 11-year-olds.
And then after that,
hopefully we would be able to have a vaccine by the mid-fall
or hopefully at that time or early winter.
But the goal is really to make sure
we have enough safety data
and to make sure that we look for any rare events
that could occur in that group.
And that's why they're being very cautious in the children
and ensuring that they get all of the data necessary.
In general, children are still getting only mild
to moderate disease.
The rates of death in children from COVID
still remained way less than 1%.
It's probably more like around .02%
of all cases of children with COVID resulting in death.
So it's very uncommon that children will die from COVID
but more common now that they may be hospitalized
from COVID.
We know that pregnant women seem to get more severe disease
when they do get COVID, and that puts them
and their fetus at risk for poor outcomes.
The CDC has advised that pregnant women
should be part of the vaccination program, that it is safe,
which it has been shown over and over again
in tens of thousands of women
that have had no issues with themselves,
no issues with their infants who are fetuses
and after birth.
And as a matter of fact, they have seen that the infants
actually have some antibody protection from the moms
who are vaccinated similar to what they get
when mom is vaccinated against something like tetanus
or mom is vaccinated against flu.
We do see that also with COVID-19,
which is terrific because those babies under six months
are not eligible for vaccine.
So if mom is able to put past some antibodies,
this is terrific to the baby
and they have followed all of these pregnant women.
And there have been no issues with miscarriages,
no issues with any anomalies to the baby.
All of the babies have been very healthy and done very well.
And the mothers who are vaccinated
have not had any health problems and have done very well.