Last week, Dr. Mark W. Kline, a physician-in-chief, senior vice-president and chief medical officer at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, and professor of pediatrics at the Tulane University School of Medicine and LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans published an opinion piece in The Advocate about the safe and effective COVID vaccine that is approved for children and in the process of being added by the Louisiana Department of Health to the immunization schedule for age groups that have full FDA approval, with standard exemptions allowed under Louisiana law. 

Dr. Kline wrote:

“Sadly, we are off to a distressingly slow start in vaccinating young children against COVID-19. Three weeks in, we have vaccinated 946 children aged 5-11 years at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, but across Louisiana fewer than 3% of children in that age group have received their first vaccine dose, ranking us among the bottom three nationally (with Mississippi and Alabama). We have got to do better.

Gov. Edwards and LDH are right to add COVID-19 vaccines to the state’s list of required vaccines, with a parental opt-out provision.

…

The death rate from COVID-19 in children may be low, but it’s 100% if it happens to be your child. Now that COVID-19 in children is almost completely preventable through vaccination, the occurrence of serious illness and death is on us as supposedly responsible adults.” 

Click here to read the full column from Dr. Kline in The Advocate.