SW Iowa Times

Anne Marie Gruber, instruction and liaison at the University of Northern Iowa, recently asked a question that's on many an Iowan's mind as COVID vaccines for children may soon roll out.

"When will appointments be available to schedule for COVID age 5-11 vaccination?" Gruber recently asked in a Twitter post directed at MercyOne, a healthcare organization with locations throughout Iowa.

Anne Marie Gruber, University of Northern Iowa instruction and liaison librarian, asked about COVID vaccine appointments | twitter.com/amhgruber/

To date, MercyOne has not responded to Gruber's question on Twitter, nor has anyone else. The consensus among Iowa news outlets and health authorities is that COVID vaccines ought to arrive in the next week or so but few want to say how difficult it might be to get an appointment for a young child's vaccine.

The University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital is recommending parents have their health insurance card read to expedite an appointment request. The hospital already provides COVID vaccines for children 12 to 17.

Appointments for children 5 to 11 to get their COVID vaccine can't be made until there are vaccines to give them. Pfizer’s COVID vaccines for the younger age group still await approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before they can be rolled out in Iowa, Keloland reported on Tuesday, Oct. 26. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, will have to approve the vaccines before they can be administered but emergency authorization may be coming sooner.

An FDA advisory committee earlier this week recommended emergency use authorization for a Pfizer COVID vaccine for children 5 to 11. A final FDA decision is expected "in the coming days," Pfizer said in a news release announcing the FDA panel's recommendation. If FDA approval is followed by nods from the CDC and ACIP, then the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 two-dose vaccine will become the first COVID vaccine to be made available for use in children ages 5 to 11.

"The companies expect to then begin shipping pediatric vaccine doses immediately, as directed by the U.S. government," Pfizer said in its news release. "Eligible U.S. residents will continue to receive the vaccine for free, consistent with the U.S. government’s commitment to free access to COVID-19 vaccines."

Based on that timeline, a COVID vaccine for the younger children could arrive in Iowa as early as Thursday, Nov. 4, according to a KCCI Des Moines news report this week. About 284,000 Iowans in that age group will be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccination and, thus far, the state has allocated about 99,000 pediatric doses.

"We are hopeful with the vaccine, we can prevent many, many kids from getting sick," UnityPoint Health pediatrician Amy Shriver said in the KCCI news story. "We can prevent them from getting hospitalized or dying and we can hopefully prevent the spread of COVID to other vulnerable populations. So, possibly, this could mean that the rates of COVID drop and that we all feel safer – both at home and at school and in the workplace."

Iowa parents who want their children vaccinated as soon as possible might want to start calling now.