Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) said this week it’s not the job of the government to force underage children to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“It’s not my job to tell parents or kids to get vaccinated,” he told local news outlet WCAX-TV. “What we want to do is make sure that it is safe, and I think the evidence seems to suggest that it would be safe.”
Sanders’ comments on Wednesday come as the Food and Drug Administration is reportedly prepared to authorize the use of the Pfizer vaccine in children and teenagers ages 12 to 15. The approval could come as soon as next week, according to NPR.
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Pfizer announced in late March it would request emergency use authorization for the age group after conducting a clinical trial showing the vaccine offered “100% efficacy and robust antibody responses” in adolescents.
Vaccinations against COVID-19 are already approved for people 16 years and older.
Only 30% of parents who participated in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey said they would get their 12-15-year-old kids vaccinated right away. Eighteen percent said they would only do so if it was required by their child’s school, while 23% said they are definitely opposed to vaccinating their children.
The mayor of Lancaster, California, is trying incentivize younger people to get inoculated. The city is raffling scholarships — with a $10,000 grand prize — for teenagers who take the vaccine. People between the ages of 16 and 18 can join the raffle ending June 30, ABC News reported.
Authorizing the Pfizer vaccination for even younger people has sparked a debate over whether it should be required for in-person education, as more than 200 colleges and universities have already announced.
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Sharon Masling, a partner at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Morgan Lewis, told CNBC that requirements will look different across school districts.
“Some school districts are going to want to be aggressive and see requiring vaccines as the way back to normal,” she said, “whereas other school districts may want to move more slowly, especially in areas where there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy.”
The renewed conversation about vaccine mandates comes as President Joe Biden — who has said the inoculation should not be compulsory — announced he wants to see 70% of Americans at least partially vaccinated by July 4.
So far, more than 56% of Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and nearly 105 million people are fully vaccinated against the virus.
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