AHN offering child covid vaccines at 3 clinics, will add pediatricians' offices soon

Allegheny Health Network Pediatric Institute will host three community vaccination clinics for children ages 5 to 11 this month.

• Saturday, Nov. 13 from 8 a.m. to noon at Allegheny General Hospital’s Hemlock Building, 320 E. North Ave. in Pittsburgh’s North Side.

• Saturday, Nov. 20 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at AHN Pediatrics’ Chartiers office, 1370 Washington Pike, suite 107 in Bridgeville.

• Saturday, Nov. 20 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at AHN Pediatrics’ Arcadia office, 9795 Perry Highway in Wexford.

These first-dose clinics of the Pfizer-BioNTech covid vaccine are strictly designated for the newly eligible pediatric group, AHN officials said Friday.

Make an appointment

They are available by appointment only.

Parents and guardians can schedule appointments by visiting AHN’s online scheduling portal at ahn.org/coronavirus/vaccine/schedule or accessing their MyChart accounts.

For established pediatric patients at the network, AHN will also begin to administer the covid vaccine across its practices next week. Patients can schedule these appointments by calling their regular AHN pediatrician’s office.

““We’re strongly urging parents and guardians to get their children vaccinated as soon as its available to them,” said Joseph Aracri, pediatrician and chair of the AHN Pediatric Institute. “The data has shown the Pfizer vaccination series to be notably safe and extremely effective in preventing covid-19 transmission in this age group, with a 90.7 (percent) success rate in clinical trials.”

AHN officials said a dose of Pfizer for young children contains one-third the amount of active ingredient compared to the adult dose. Children would receive a second dose 21 days or more after their first shot.

AHN officials said safety data from clinical trials, which included more than 3,000 children, found the most common reactions were pain at the injection site, fatigue and headache; most were mild to moderate.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics. since the start of the pandemic, about 1.9 million children ages 5-11 years have been infected, which is about 9% of all U.S. cases. More than 8,300 children have been hospitalized and 94 have died.

The death toll in the past year puts covid in the top 10 causes of death for this age group, and the number of cases has grown steadily since the start of the academic school year, according to AHN officials.

AHN has administered more than 390,000 doses throughout its primary care offices, hospital-based clinics and community vaccination events to date.

More information is available at ahn.org.