MORGANTOWN — Today’s the day the nation may notch another step closer to a COVID vaccine for children under 12.
The meter will begin running when an independent advisory panel from the Food and Drug Administration sits down to discuss the merits of that dose — which Pfizer says is overwhelmingly safe to administer to youngsters from 5 to 11 years of age.
After today, a similar board from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will have that same talk on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.
A study from Pfizer in Belgium earlier this month had positive numbers the drug maker didn’t mind reporting. The initial jabs showed a success rate of more than 90% in preventing symptomatic infections.
That’s with no unexpected side effects, according to Associated Press and other national media outlets, though there were complaints of sore arms and slight achiness to go with mild fevers in some of the recipients.
Most of the testing was done in August and September when the Delta variant of the strain ruled.
There is a coronavirus-caveat, though, those scientists who did the study said.
Their control group, they told reporters, wasn’t large enough to pick up on any of the extremely rare side-effects among the inoculated, including cases of myocarditis — an inflammation of the heart that in some instances has shown up in people after the second dose.
Meanwhile, there are 28 million children in that age group in the U.S., and the White House, in anticipation, has bought enough doses to cover them all.
That purchase also has a caveat: There’s the understanding that not every child will get the shot, due to politics, pre-existing health conditions and other factors in their households.
Even so, shots could begin going into arms as early as that first week in November, if the FDA and CDC say so.
Monongalia County’s school district will roll out the clinics the second that happens.
“It’s a game-changer,” said Eddie Campbell Jr., Mon’s superintendent of schools.
More shots in more arms, he said, means more of a return to normalcy.
Since March 13, 2020, when Gov. Jim Justice ordered schools closed in anticipation of the pandemic, that word — “normalcy” — has been a foreign one, in school districts across the Mountain State.
It may be making a comeback, at least regarding the hues of the County Alert Map maintained by the state Department of Health and Health Resources.
The map as of Monday showed a quartet of green in Monongalia, Tucker, Lewis and Gilmer counties.
Preston was showing gold and 14 other counties presented red.
To date, 4,297 COVID deaths have been reported in the Mountain State, with 7,867 active cases.
Mon Schools closed out last week with 38 students and five staffers presenting positive.
A total of 148 students were in quarantine, and so were five other employees.
Nicholas County High School has the most cases of the contagion among West Virginia schools, with 92 cases reported.
A number of those cases are “related to extracurricular activities,” the state Department of Education said on its website.
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