A lot of parents have said, “Does my child need to be vaccinated?” Which I think is a fair question. As a pediatrician, I answer this way, “Your child needs to be vaccinated and the reason is because kids are affected by COVID.” When we saw the Delta surge, just this past fall, we saw that kids made up nearly a quarter, one out of every four COVID cases in the country. So, for as much as we’ve heard the media say, “Oh, kids aren’t affected,” or maybe you’ve heard somebody else mention that kids don’t get COVID. We as pediatricians know, that’s not true. Kids get COVID and they can get incredibly sick and even die of COVID. And, so, it’s really important for parents to understand that vaccinating your kid is the number one way to protect them from getting infected with COVID, to protect them from being hospitalized with COVID and from dying with COVID.
I also have a very specific concern about what we’ve seen happen within our communities of color, particularly Black, Latinx and other Spanish-speaking communities throughout the pandemic. Our communities have weathered a disproportionate burden of COVID cases, COVID deaths and COVID hospitalizations. And, so, we have to make sure that we’re also doing our part to protect our communities and our kids by getting them vaccinated.
