CORPUS CHRISTI — As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has given the final go-ahead for children as young as 6 months to get vaccinated against COVID-19, Corpus Christi parents now must decide if they want to have their infants and toddlers vaccinated.
A CDC advisory committee unanimously approved vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, but some local parents said that's not enough to give them peace of mind.
Cindy Medina also said she wouldn’t consider getting her 4-year-old son Draven vaccinated.
“Not enough research,” she said. “I feel like there’s not enough.”
Medina said she is vaccinated, but feels the standard is different for children.
“It should take longer than, what was it, like a year? That they put it out for adults? And, like, a couple of months later, just children. It’s like – I don’t know.”
Elham Azali has two sons, ages 9 and 7, who have been vaccinated. As she took her infant daughter to a doctor's appointment Monday morning, she didn't discount vaccinating her.
“I would have to look into it a little bit more,” she said. “Maybe it’s something to consider, yeah.”
The vaccines approved are Pfizer-Biontech's three-dose regimen for children 6 months old to 4 years old, and Moderna's two-dose regimen for kids 6 months old to 5 years old.
Angie Garza is wary after getting her now-6-year-old daughter vaccinated against the flu before the novel coronavirus pandemic. She said that shot gave her older daughter fever, so she's not sure if it's something she wants for her 4-year-old, Aubrey.
"I’m kinda iffy with her," she said. "I really don’t want to expose her to that. Hopefully her immune system is enough right now to kinda fight all that. I’m just real skeptical. ”
One local parent who didn't want to be named said she hadn't been vaccinated, and she had no intention of getting her son vaccinated.
"I just don’t believe in it," she said. "I haven’t got COVID. We just take care -– we just take the precautions. We wear masks; sanitize when we leave places.”
Amanda Botello and her family also were wearing masks when they left the local clinic, but inoculating her 5-year-old still felt like a good idea to her. Her youngest, Sunflower, is the only one of her children currently under 5.
“I just feel like it’s safer,” she said. “I mean, it’s a little bit of a protection, ‘cause there’s so many things going around right now, so it’s just another thing that would help me feel like they’re protected a little bit more.”
The CDC's approval of these two vaccines will affect some 20,000,000 children across the U.S.
