Why is finding covid shots for young children still so hard?

On Sept. 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention really helpful the following round of covid shots for everybody 6 months and older. The shots were expected to be available inside days in pharmacies and doctor’s offices across the country, the CDC said.

But greater than a month later, the pediatric versions of the brand new covid shots, for youngsters 6 months to 11 years old, are still difficult to seek out. A confluence of problems — from technicalities about who can provide shots to small kids to the shortage of accurate information online on where the kid-sized doses may be found — are still stopping parents from ensuring their children are protected.

“No person has accurate information on where doses actually exist. It’s just an absolute logistical mess trying to seek out information and it was driving me insane,” said Anne Hamilton, a Los Angeles resident, who looked for weeks to seek out a pediatric dose for her 4-year-old son, Jimmy.

Hamilton checked first together with her son’s health system. The web site was offering vaccine appointments just for adults.

On the web site, “the popup says ‘recent vaccines are expected in late September, try again later.’ Well, that is a frustrating message to read when it’s October and they are not providing you with some other information,” she said.

One problem that has caused headaches for fogeys has been trying to seek out doses covered by their insurance. For the primary time because the start of the pandemic, the federal government is not paying manufacturers directly for covid shots, a process that allowed doctors and pharmacists to receive shipments totally free. Now, pharmacies and doctors must pay upfront for vaccine doses from suppliers to stock them on-site. And families need to make use of their medical insurance to pay providers for them — and that may be complicated.

After days searching online and plenty of false leads, Hamilton finally found a pharmacy over an hour away in Palmdale with pediatric doses. She called to be certain they really had the shots and likewise accepted Medi-Cal, her son’s government insurance. After being assured of each, they made the hourlong drive. But after they arrived, the pharmacists said they couldn’t give Jimmy the shot because he was under 18 years old. Hamilton called Medi-Cal to make clear.

“The Medi-Cal phone representative explained to us that they should undergo the Vaccines for Children Program,” she said. “So we’re like, all right, we do not know what this program is.”

Under the federal government’s Vaccines for Children program, Hamilton’s son could get a shot only from a participating provider.

“No person put out the data that children on Medi-Cal needed to be vaccinated through the Vaccines for Children program,” Hamilton said.

“No person has information on the best way to discover a pop-up [clinic] near you because half of those aren’t even listed on the myturn.gov page,” she said, referring to a vaccine appointment website run by the state of California.

Hamilton was directed to a special California-run website that was purported to show the situation of Vaccines for Children providers across the state.

“The web site just flat-out doesn’t work,” Hamilton said after checking it.

Frustrated, she emailed the California Department of Public Health, which told her they were aware the web site was down and said “IT was working on it.” Nobody from CDPH offered to assist Hamilton or direct her to the provider list she needed, she said.

After KFF Health News and NPR asked CDPH why Vaccines for Children’s Google-enabled map was not working, the web site was fixed. Nevertheless, it shows only participating providers while neglecting to point if those doctors and pharmacies have pediatric covid vaccines in stock. Parents must either call providers individually to see in the event that they are taking patients and have the shot or attempt to cross-reference with the federal vaccines.gov website.

Hamilton was left frustrated and in tears.

“I do know parents everywhere in the country who’re in search of doses. It’s a hunt for everybody at once,” she said.

There are two parallel vaccine systems within the U.S., and the one children use relies on their insurance. Children with industrial medical insurance get vaccines through the industrial market. But kids with government insurance equivalent to Medi-Cal get shots through the federally funded Vaccines for Children program — and only participating providers, like Orange County pediatrician Eric Ball, can provide them the shot.

Under the Vaccines for Children program, “we actually place an order, the vaccines come to us, the federal government has paid for them already, after which we distribute them to patients who’ve those insurances, totally free,” Ball explains.

For youngsters covered by industrial insurance policy, health care providers have to purchase the quantity they think they’ll need ahead of time. But Ball said many pediatricians aren’t stocking or administering the covid shot for those children, because they will’t afford to.

“Plenty of pediatric practices are small businesses, and this implies we’ve got to expend a variety of money upfront to have the ability to purchase these vaccines after which wait weeks or months to get that recouped,” he said.

If parents seek shots at a pharmacy, they could confront one other obstacle: regulations that restrict the varieties of providers who can administer vaccines to children. Pharmacists can vaccinate children 3 years and older under a short lived federal law. That leaves out children between 6 months and three years old, who must see a medical doctor.

“Now we have a really long list in our office of families who’re waiting for the day that our covid vaccines are available so we are able to finally start vaccinating them. There’s been a variety of frustration,” Ball said.

Ball’s office participates in each pediatric vaccine systems. Through Vaccines for Children, his practice received some pediatric doses, but he can administer them only to qualifying patients.

For his commercially insured patients, it took over a month to get a delivery of just 100 pediatric covid vaccine doses. It’s not nearly enough to satisfy the demand.

“It’s a shame because we’ve had so many missed opportunities since this vaccine was approved over a month ago,” he said.

“We’ve had plenty of patients who are available who wish to get their kids vaccinated, especially young children and babies who don’t have the protection of previous vaccines.”

St. John’s Community Health is a federally funded safety-net clinic with multiple sites across Los Angeles County. The network serves low-income children and families, and for its pediatric vaccines the clinic relies on the Vaccines for Children program.

But President Jim Mangia said that for the brand new covid pediatric vaccine, their orders are being cut and they are not receiving the doses they requested.

“We ordered 3,000 last week; we got 500,” he said.

But St. John’s provides take care of 50,000 children, Mangia said. Due to shortfall, St. John’s isn’t promoting the covid vaccine or doing email or text blasts to spread the word, because the staff typically might.

“We’re mainly holding back,” he said. “If someone asks for it, we’re providing the vaccine, but we’re not doing the extent of outreach that we normally do to get people vaccinated because we don’t have enough supply yet.”

The Vaccines for Children program is run by the CDC. On a recent visit to Los Angeles, CDC Director Mandy Cohen said she was not aware of any covid vaccine supply or ordering issues.

“There’s no ordering caps. We’re hearing that folk are getting shipments inside three or 4 weeks,” she said. “I’ll say, personally, my kid’s pediatrician has vaccine and has had a covid vaccine clinic, so the vaccine is on the market.”

Anne Hamilton’s son Jimmy finally got the shot through a pop-up clinic run by LA County. She feels lucky to have found it.

“I told one among my friends that I used to be going to get my kids their shots, and she or he said, ‘You found pediatric vaccine? I can’t consider it.’”

Ball is anxious about what the slow rollout will mean for vulnerable babies and toddlers, who’re too young to have been vaccinated before and will get multiple shots before the expected winter covid surge.

“If we wish to get these children vaccinated for gatherings equivalent to Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, it’s critical that we start doing this now because this will not be a one-and-done type of situation. We’d like these babies to get multiple doses over multiple weeks before they may be adequately protected,” he said.

Meanwhile, children proceed to get infected. One in every of Ball’s 4-year-old patients tested positive on the identical day Ball’s medical office finally received 100 doses of the pediatric vaccine. The boy’s mother had tried to get him vaccinated earlier but couldn’t discover a provider with the shots.

“As a pediatrician, the one thing that hurts me worse than seeing a baby get sick or hospitalized is them getting sick or hospitalized by something that I could have prevented. And if I don’t have the tools to forestall that, it hurts me and it’s very sad,” Ball said.

This text was reprinted from khn.org, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one among the core operating programs at KFF – the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.