Health official says appointments at vaccine clinic ‘filling up more quickly’ as kids 12 and older allowed to receive shots

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    HONOLULU (KITV) — Regardless of the Center’s for Disease Control and Prevention’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine for kids age 12 and older Wednesday afternoon, representatives from the Queen’s Health Systems said they were already planning to administer doses to the age group.

According to Queen’s, the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to allow the shot for children on Monday was all it needed to offer the vaccine.

The health system reports more than 70 kids between the ages of 12 and 15 were signed up to receive the vaccine at its mass vaccination clinic at the Blaisdell Center on Wednesday.

One of them was 12-year-old Everett Pham, who said he was a little nervous before getting jabbed, but immediately after expressed, “I’m feeling pretty good.”

Surrounded by media personnel while being inoculated, the Punahou 6th grader said his first dose felt like any other vaccine he has ever gotten.

“Just, there were people filming me,” Pham said jokingly.

Pham’s father Julius is a physician at the Queen’s Medical Center — both agreed the decision to receive the shot was a no-brainer.

“When dad came home and said ‘do you want to take the vaccine?’ I said, ‘yeah,” Pham recalled.

Pham, one of the first in his age group to get vaccinated in Hawai’i, said he wanted to get the vaccine to help protect his classmates and to clear the way for him to travel and visit family.

“Pretty much we’ve lost a year of all of that stuff that you know, normally kids do,” Julius Pham said. “So this is our opportunity to get back to that.”

Dr. Pham wasn’t the only parent eager to get their newly eligible kids vaccinated Wednesday. Hawai’i Pacific Health (HPH) inoculated 35 12 to 15-year-olds on O’ahu Wednesday.

An HPH spokesperson said so far, 200 kids between the ages of 12 and 15 are scheduled to receive their vaccine at the Wilcox Medical Center on Kaua’i.

“Our appointments are filling up more quickly than they have been for the last several weeks, so we expect those must be parents of those 12 to 15-year-old kids who have been waiting,” HPH executive vice president Dr. Melinda Ashton said.

A pediatrician, Dr. Ashton said even though kids do not get as sick from the Coronavirus as adults, vaccinating children ages 12 to 15 will accelerate the transition back to normalcy — so she is encouraging parents to get their kids vaccinated as soon as possible.

“We know what the side effects are, we know when they happen, we know a lot about this vaccine now,” Ashton said.

“It’s actually a very, very well-studied vaccine now, so if you’re worried about that, I think the time has passed to worry about those kinds of things.”

Appointments for the Pfizer vaccine, the only shot approved for kids age 12 and older right now, are available at the Blaisdell vaccination clinic Wednesday through Saturday.

At HPH clinics, Pfizer appointments are offered every day those sites are open.

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