Ingham County is preparing to vaccinate children ages 5 and up against the coronavirus after the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the Pfizer vaccine Tuesday.
This follows the FDA authorizing the emergency use of the vaccine for kids 5 to 11 last week.
But before vaccinations can start being administered, their recommendations need to be endorsed by CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
Speaking at a media briefing on Tuesday, Health Officer Linda Vail says she expects approval from the CDC before Thursday.
"We are hopeful that by the end of the week, we will be doing vaccinations for 5 to 11-year-olds, but it's going to depend on those two things, the approval [Tuesday], as well as actually receiving the vaccine on site to be able to do that," she said.
In Ingham County nearly two-thirds of people ages 12 and up have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
While cases of COVID-19 have been trending downward in the last month, the Ingham County Health Department says cases appear to be plateauing in the last week.
Vail said the county’s positivity rate is around 10%. She said a higher percent positivity rate suggests higher transmission.
"So you see that trend and positivity still above the 10% level, which is very high. Ideally, we want to be back down here in the 2% to 3% range. 3% being ideally in the low range," she added.
Vail adds that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who haven’t been tested yet.
So far, those in the 20-29 age group make up the majority of COVID cases in the county.
Vail says this is expected since the county has a high number of adults in that age range living in the area.
As of Tuesday, there have been 31,692 cases of COVID-19 in Ingham County since the beginning of the pandemic. In the last week, the county is reporting 779 new cases.
