NEW ORLEANS — Children ages 5 to 11 will be able to get a Covid-19 vaccine after the CDC cleared Pfizer's doses for younger kids Tuesday night. This news comes with a sigh of relief for parents across the country who have been waiting to get their child vaccinated.
The health of students, teachers and staff is top priority in New Orleans public schools, and school and local health professionals say vaccinations are what will keep students and teachers in the classroom.
Today, November 3, NOLA-PS and the city of New Orleans Health Department will host a town hall meeting with healthcare professionals. The goal is to answer any questions about the vaccine and explain how future vaccine events for this age group will be rolled out by the school district.
"We learned a lot about how Covid-19 affects our children through the Delta surge. And in that surge, we found that our students were contracting the disease at higher rates than they ever had before, again, because they are the most unvaccinated group of individuals in our country and in our community," says Tiffany Delcour, Chief Operations Officer for NOLA-PS. "So, we're seeing Covid-19 affect younger students at levels we haven't before and that really affects the urgency of why vaccinations are so important."
Health officials say the Covid-19 vaccine prevents severe illness and helps control the spread of the virus. Delcour says vaccinations are essential to preserving in-person learning for students and teachers. She says besides the health benefits, there are also benefits for your family.
"If your child is vaccinated and they're identified as in close contact over the next few months they will not have to quarantine if they're vaccinated. So, there's some stability that vaccination provides families," she said. "And we want to make sure they're aware of that as they're making their own decisions about whether to vaccinate their children or not. We also want to make sure families understand the resources that are going to be available locally and through our school system to get those vaccines."
Delcour says vaccinated children are a large, missing part to keeping our communities safe. Even after Governor John Bel Edwars lifted his mask mandate, including in school buildings, Delcour says their school decided to keep the mandate in place for their school buildings and buses. She says the mandate will stay in place until vaccination numbers are in a good place.
"It's going to take time to vaccinate those who want it, to get our vaccination rates open and up in our city and in our school buildings and I think we're wanting to think about how many students we can get vaccinated before we consider removing the mask mandate in our school," Delcour said.
As far as the Covid-19 vaccine being required for students in the future, Delcour says right now their focus is full approval. She says parents can expect vaccine events to begin as soon as next Saturday, November 13.
Today's webinar meeting starts at 6 p.m. You can access the meeting here.
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