Rough inflation numbers can't distract from this wonderful COVID milestone.
The White House estimated Wednesday that almost 1 million kids ages 5 to 11 have received shots of Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine since its authorization last week, says The New York Times.
COVID Reponse Coordinator Jeff Zients "conservatively" judged the number of kids who have received their first shot at 900,000. He added that an "additional 700,000 pediatric vaccination appointments have been scheduled at pharmacies across the nation," writes the Times.
"Our goal clearly is to vaccinate as many kids as possible," Zients said Wednesday at a White House briefing. "This is the very beginning of the program. The program is just getting up to full strength."
To circumvent a lag in reporting to the Centers for Diease Control and Prevention, the White House connected with state and local health officials to conduct its own vaccination analysis, which is where it got the 900,000 number, reports the Times.
Zients stopped short of setting a vaccination goal for young kids similar to President Biden's goal of partially vaccinating at least 70 percent of adults by July 4.
"I want to emphasize again that we have plenty of supply for all 28 million kids ages 5 to 11," he said. "We're off to a very strong start."