chance to have their 8-year-old vaccinated today. and we should be grateful for that. because we live in a great country and we should take full advantage of the opportunity. in reporting this story, i can reinforce everything you heard there. this is a vaccine with a 91% efficacy rate within this age group, 5 to 11. as you said, there are some parents out there that are going to wait and see. about a third of those polled said they probably won t get their kids vaccinated at all. but a lot of people around the world are desperate for this vaccine today. health care workers who have been on the front line for 18 months say it s a historic day, joe. dr. hotez, we re almost a year into this vaccination effort. you hear from kids like carter there, we get to this moment, what s the significance of this in your mind and what s it been like at your hospital today? i think the big game changer was this delta variant over the summer that ripped through the south, including here in texas
tomorrow with her recommendation. pfizer saying that the two-dose regimen for these young children would have an efficacy rate of 91%. it s a question that we debate between ourselves all the time when we talk about vaccines for children. are they eventually going to let the kids take the masks off at school? at what point do we have a population that is vaccinated enough to take the masks off in the classroom. that s a great question, sandra. we have gotten into this state where people are not low kay living with a level of risk. we heard people say that following vaccination that they re not going to remove face masks because they may decrease flu transmission. we have always lived going forward knowing that there s a risk of certain respiratory viruss in the winter. there s consequences to the continued face mask wearing. we have to do what we can to protect the vulnerable and that includes children with
enough, there s nowhere of a requirement going to be considered on vaccinated at some point? look, shannon, this goes back to the problem that you and i have been discussing for some time now, which is that we are using vaccination as a metric for when to stop, when to vaccinate, and when not to vaccinate. and really it s immunity that should be our focus. so in other words, yes, the vaccines do have an efficacy rate at higher in fact, 70% of them have worked perfectly fine. and really the way we would know is by assessing the actual clinical methods of immunity, which the gold standard is the antibody test. as you know on may 19th of 21, they ve discouraged for measuring antibody levels. when it comes to the police officers and places like new york and chicago, firefighters, these folks a lot of the folks are hesitant because they ve actually had
major developments indicating we may closer to vaccinating younger kids against covid. the fda on friday explaining the benefits of the pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 outweigh the risks. the pfizer study found a 90% efficacy rate in preventing symptomatic cases. they will discuss emergency authorization for lower doses of pfizer for children. also this week, the cdc signing off on the fda s approval for moderna and johnson & johnson boosters. all johnson & johnson recipients over 18 years old will be eligible for a booster shot at least two months after their first shot. the moderna boosters are recommended at least six months after receiving their last vaccine for anyone 65 and older or anyone over 18 at high risk because of their job or medical conditions.
boosters for five years were approved last month and a recent study by pfizer found that taking their booster restored full protection with a 95.6 efficacy rate. the delta strain was the most prominent among the 10,000 people in the study. the fda s also allowing a mix-and-match approach for americans to get a booster from a different covid vaccine than they originally received. here s the cdc director on how that works. the vast majority of people will probably select the one that they originally received and did really well with, but there may be some people who would prefer a different vaccine or if you go into a pharmacy and they don t have the vaccine that you originally got, it really is fine to get a different vaccine. with me now, msnbc medical contributor dr. kavita patel. she is also the former director of policy for the obama administration. dr. patel, i got to say, you and i have weathered a lot of