Newsom Orders 400,000 COVID Vaccines, Encourages Them for Children

California Gov. Gavin Newsom holds up a vial of the new COVID-19 vaccine at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in Los Angeles, Calif., on Dec. 14, 2020. (Jae C. Hong/Pool/Getty Images)

Calfornia Gov. Gavin Newsom pre-ordered June 19 nearly 400,000 doses of both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to be administered at 8,500 vaccine sites in the state.

This comes on the same day a group of scientists submitted a review to Newsom and unanimously concluded that vaccines are “safe and effective” for children as young as six months old.

The review—which was sent also to governors in Oregon, Washington, and Nevada—prompted Newsom to pre-order the vaccines.

“Vaccines are safe, effective, and widely accessible—we’re strongly encouraging parents to protect their kids from COVID-19 with these vaccines,” Newsom said in a statement on Sunday.

The COVID-19 vaccines were authorized for young children by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration June 17 and were recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) June 18.

The review was orchestrated by the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup (pdf), made up of immunization researchers. It found that since March 2020, two million cases of COVID-19 occurred among those younger than 5 years old resulting in 20,000 hospitalizations. In total, 200 deaths were recorded, or 0.01 percent of the two million cases.

The study noted African American, Hispanic-Latino, and Native American children were among the highest demographic to be hospitalized from the virus.

The workgroup suggested children get either the two-vaccine dose of Moderna for infants and children 6 months through 5 years, or the three-vaccine dose of the Pfizer vaccine for those 6 months through 4 years, and concluded that the efficacy of the vaccines “substantially outweigh any known or likely risks.”

The workgroup said healthcare providers and vaccine recipients are urged to report any side effects or adverse reactions to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System “because the various U.S. systems for monitoring the safety of vaccinations, including COVID-19 vaccines are important to sustaining confidence in immunization and guiding vaccination policy.”

The coalition of scientists called on officials to “educate parents … about the risks of COVID-19- illness, hospitalization and death in infants and young children and the benefits and risks of COVID-19 vaccine” because of the low COVID-19 vaccination rate among children age 5 to 17, and survey results suggesting “many parents are not yet convinced of the need for COVID-19 vaccination in infants and children.”

According to CDC provisional data, over the last two years, more than 1 million COVID-19 deaths were reported in the United States. Out of those, 0.0003 percent were less than a year old, 0.0001 percent were between the ages of 1 to 4, and 0.0011 percent were between 0 to 17 years old.

Newport Beach family practice physician Dr. Jeff Barke calls the move “just fantasy that there’s some sort of emergency” to warrant the approval.

“It’s completely unnecessary,” Barke told The Epoch Times. “And then in California, Gov. Newsom is going to take it a step further, in my opinion, he will now mandate the COVID vaccine as part of the childhood vaccine schedule in order to attend school.”