(NEW YORK) — The alleged suspect in the unprovoked fatal shooting of 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez on a Q train in New York City is in police custody, according to law enforcement sources.
Sources identified the suspect as Andrew Abdullah, a 25-year-old man from Brooklyn with about 20 prior arrests, including an outstanding gun charge from last year. He also has prior arrests for assault, robbery, menacing and grand larceny, sources said.
Abdullah has three cases that are still pending, including an April arrest for fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property for allegedly being found with a stolen motorcycle, as well as a June 2021 arrest for violating a protective order and March 2021 arrest for assault.
Detectives have also recovered the gun used in the shooting.
It is believed the suspect handed the gun to a homeless man as he fled the Canal Street station. The homeless man then apparently sold the gun for $10 to a third person, who reported it to police, the sources said.
The New York Police Department released surveillance photos Monday of the suspect believed to have shot Enriquez taken shortly after he exited the subway.
The motive for the shooting is still unknown.
In January 2020, Abdullah was arrested as part of a gun-related case and in May 2017 he was charged with second-degree attempted murder as part of an 83-count federal indictment of the Harlem-based street gangs Fast Money and Nine Block. Abdullah was sentenced to three years in federal prison, but served just four months before being released in 2019.
Witnesses say the suspect, alleged to be Abdullah, was pacing back and forth in the last car of a Manhattan-bound train around 11:45 a.m. when he pulled out a gun and fired it at Enriquez unprovoked, according to NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.
The shooting comes a little over a month after a Brooklyn subway rider opened fire on a train car, wounding 10 people. The suspect in that shooting, Frank James, was arrested one day later in lower Manhattan.
Transit crime is up 62.5% in the city year-to-date from 2021, according to NYPD statistics.
(FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.) — A blue-ribbon Army commission has recommended new names for nine Army bases named after Confederate leaders, including Fort Bragg, which will be recommended to be renamed Fort Liberty, according to a U.S. official, ABC News learned exclusively Tuesday.
Later Tuesday, the Army Naming Commission is expected to formally disclose its recommended names for the bases named after Confederate generals.
Last year, Congress passed legislation that required the renaming of U.S. military installations named after Confederate leaders by 2023.
Congress and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin must approve the nine naming recommendations.
Fort Bragg in North Carolina is currently named after Gen. Braxton Bragg, a senior Confederate Army general. It would be renamed as Fort Liberty, the only one of the bases named after a concept, with eight others being renamed mostly after individuals with ties to Army history.
The other bases to be renamed are Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Rucker in Alabama, Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia and Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia.
The panel has recommended that Fort Hood, Texas, be renamed after Richard E. Cavazos, the first Latino to reach the rank of a four-star general in the Army.
Fort Gordon, Georgia, will be renamed after Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Army general who led all allied forces in Europe during World War II and later became president.
Fort Lee, Virginia, will be named after two individuals: Arthur Gregg, a former three-star general involved in logistics — the only living individual for whom a base will be named — and Charity Adams, the first African-American woman to be an officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.
Fort Pickett, Virginia, will be named after Van Barfoot, who received the Medal of Honor for his heroism during World War II and is of Native American descent.
Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, will be renamed after Dr. Mary Walker, a physician and women’s rights activist who received the Medal of Honor for her service during the Civil War.
Fort Benning, Georgia, will be renamed after Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, a pioneer in the Air Cavalry whose Vietnam-era story was memorialized in the book and movie, “We Were Soldiers.”
Fort Rucker, Alabama, will be named after Michael Novosel, a Medal of Honor recipient who flew combat aircraft in World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Fort Polk, Louisiana, will be renamed after William Henry Johnson, a soldier whose heroism in World War Two was not honored with the Medal of Honor until 2015.
(NEW YORK) — Lately, the stock market has taken a thrashing.
The Nasdaq and S&P 500 have each fallen for seven consecutive weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fared even worse, dropping for eight weeks straight, the longest such losing streak for the index since the early years of the Great Depression, in 1932.
The losses on Wall Street owe in no small part to the wider economy’s most pressing problem: sky-high inflation, Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at broker OANDA, told ABC News. For months, strong consumer spending and snarled supply chains have sent prices soaring for everyday expenses like food and gas, as well as for materials like computer chips that many US companies rely upon.
In response, the Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate to a range of 0.75% to 1%, and the central bank has signaled a series of additional hikes.
The goal is to slow down the economy, which in theory should eat away at demand and slash inflation. But the approach all but ensures a downturn for stocks, and runs the risk of hitting the brakes on the economy so hard that it triggers a wider contraction.
“The stock market is down — I’m not surprised, that’s by design,” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, told ABC News.
But the rate hikes at the Fed could send the economy into a downturn, especially if an unexpected headwind puts further strain on the economy, Zandi said.
“The risks of this going off the rails are pretty high,” he said. “So we’re vulnerable.”
As the market and economy teeter, buzzwords like “correction,” “bear market” and even “recession” are coming back into the conversation, conjuring images of layoffs, foreclosures and bankruptcies.
But the definitions and implications of these terms can get lost in the tumult, stoking outsized panic in some cases and insufficient caution in others.
What is a bear market?
The S&P 500 made headlines last Friday when it briefly entered bear market territory, which generally means a 20% drop since the index’s most recent high over at least a two-month period. On Friday afternoon, the index had fallen 1.9% for the day, crossing the threshold for a bear market. But it rallied to end the trading day up 0.01% point, elevating it just barely outside of bear market territory. As of market close on Monday, it had ticked up even further.
For its part, the tech-heavy Nasdaq entered a bear market on March 7, and as of market close on Monday had fallen more than 30% since a record high in November.
The prospect of a bear market, and the pessimistic investment environment that it entails, carry disconcerting near-term implications. In the 26 bear markets since 1929, the S&P 500 — the index that most people’s 401(k)’s track — has lost an average of 35.6% of its value over a typical duration of 289 days or about 9 ½ months, according to a report from Hartford Funds.
In comparison with a bear market, a correction entails a milder stock market decline, amounting to a drop of 10% to 20% from the most recent high. The S&P 500 has been in correction territory since late February.
For some traders who jumped into the market during its pandemic boom — when the S&P 500 rose some 108% from March 2020 to its peak in early January — the current downturn may be their first. But a bear market is an expected part of the stock market cycle, especially in light of the pandemic stimulus that flooded the economy in the form of direct payments, low interest rates and other measures, Moya, the senior market analyst, told ABC News.
“We’ve seen a historic amount of support help stabilize the economy,” Moya said. “Also, what that did was inflate risky assets, which included the stock market.”
The currently depressed stock prices should appeal to patient traders, Moya added.
“If you’re a long-term investor, and you believe in the US. economy and that the froth is being taken out of the market,” he said. “These levels should be attractive.”
What is a recession?
The unrelenting market decline has raised fears of a recession.
Many observers define a recession through the shorthand metric of two consecutive quarters of decline in a nation’s inflation-adjusted gross domestic product, or GDP. A country’s GDP is the total value of goods and services that it produces.
U.S. GDP shrank at an annual rate of 1.4% over the first three months of this year, the worst quarterly performance since the recession brought about by the coronavirus in 2020. If the GDP contracts over the second quarter of the year, that would qualify the downturn as a recession in many people’s eyes.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, a research organization seen as an authority on measuring economic performance, uses a more complicated definition that takes into account several indicators that must convey “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months,” the group says. This definition determines whether a downturn is formally designated as a recession, since the NBER is the official arbiter on the subject.
A report released last year by the NBER showed that the pandemic-induced recession of 2020 lasted only two months. By comparison, the organization said that the Great Recession spanned from December 2007 to June 2009, lasting 18 months.
“The R-word is something that triggers a lot of fear and panic for your average American because normally it suggests the job market is taking a turn for the worse and that consumer spending will weaken significantly,” Moya, the senior market analyst, said.
Zandi, the chief economist, put the odds of a recession over the next 12 months at 1 in 3. But he downplayed the severity of a potential recession, noting that he doesn’t see any “major imbalances” in the economy.
“It’s likely to be short and mild,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a reason to run for the bunkers but it’s a reason to be cautious.”
(NEW YORK) — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting an above-normal hurricane season in the Atlantic, with up to 21 named storms this year.
Ten storms could become hurricanes, the agency said. Three to six storms may reach category 3, 4 or 5.
2022 may also become the seventh consecutive above-average hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.
“The increased activity anticipated this hurricane season is attributed to several climate factors, including the ongoing La Niña that is likely to persist throughout the hurricane season, warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, weaker tropical Atlantic trade winds and an enhanced west African monsoon,” NOAA said in a press release.
NOAA predicts a 65% chance of an above-normal hurricane season, a 25% chance of a near-normal season and a 10% chance of a below-normal season.
“As we reflect on another potentially busy hurricane season, past storms — such as Superstorm Sandy, which devastated the New York metro area ten years ago — remind us that the impact of one storm can be felt for years,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement.
Spinrad added, “Since Sandy, NOAA’s forecasting accuracy has continued to improve, allowing us to better predict the impacts of major hurricanes to lives and livelihoods.”
(NEW YORK) — As the search for the woman wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of professional cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson continues, the suspect’s father said he does not think his daughter is capable of the alleged murder.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ chief national correspondent Matt Gutman on Good Morning America Tuesday, Michael Armstrong spoke directly to his daughter, Kaitlin Armstrong, saying, “We love you … and we are going to figure this out.”
“I know her and I know how she thinks and I know what she believes and I know that she just would not do something like this,” Michael Armstrong said. “I know her.”
Last week, Austin police issued a warrant for the arrest of Armstrong, 35, on a first-degree murder charge in the fatal shooting of Wilson, 25, who they determined was romantically linked to Armstrong’s boyfriend, professional cyclist Colin Strickland.
Wilson, a rising elite cyclist, was in Austin for a gravel bike race earlier this month when she was found bleeding and unconscious with multiple gunshot wounds at a friend’s home the night of May 11, hours after meeting up with Strickland, police said. Austin police said at the time that the shooting did not appear to be random and they had a person of interest in the incident.
A car resembling Armstrong’s 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee was captured on surveillance footage from a neighboring residence stopping outside the friend’s home the night of the shooting, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. The likelihood that the gun used in the shooting matched one of two guns Strickland told police he bought for himself and Armstrong was “significant,” the affidavit stated.
When police interviewed Armstrong about the shooting on May 12, she was “confronted with video evidence of her vehicle” but “she had no explanation as to why it was in the area and did not make any denials surrounding the statements,” the affidavit stated. After further questioning, Armstrong requested to leave, according to the affidavit.
Strickland told police he hasn’t seen Armstrong since May 13, according to the affidavit. Armstrong has since deleted her social media accounts and “has not been seen or heard from since this time,” according to the affidavit.
On Friday, U.S. Marshals announced they are helping in the “fugitive investigation” and asked the public’s help in finding Kaitlin Armstrong.
Michael Armstrong said he believes there are “a lot of unanswered questions” in the case.
“I know that she did not do this,” he said.
The U.S. Marshals believe Kaitlin Armstrong may still be in the Austin area, and that finding her Jeep will be key.
“She was a realtor. She was a yoga teacher. So she had personal relationships here in the Austin area,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Brandon Filla told Good Morning America. “We hope that eventually if she had some kind of plan, that maybe she would reach out to those associates, and we would receive a tip based upon that.”
Strickland said he has been cooperating fully with detectives in the investigation.
“There is no way to adequately express the regret and torture I feel about my proximity to this horrible crime,” Strickland said in a statement to ABC News Austin affiliate KVUE. “I am sorry, and I simply cannot make sense of this unfathomable tragedy.”
Strickland explained that after breaking up with Armstrong last year, he had a “brief romantic relationship” with Wilson before shortly resuming his relationship with Armstrong. His relationship with Wilson was “platonic and professional,” he said.
Wilson’s family said in a statement to ABC News that they are “devastated by the loss of our beautiful daughter and sister.”
“Her life was taken from her before she had the opportunity to achieve everything she dreamed of,” they said. “Our family, and all those who loved her, will forever miss her.”
ABC News’ Lissette Rodriguez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Billie Eilish is opening up about living with Tourette’s syndrome.
In a new episode of David Letterman’s series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the singer, who was diagnosed at the age of 11, spoke about her tics and living with the disorder.
During the interview, Eilish appeared to start “ticcing.” When Letterman asked about it, she said, “It’s really weird; I haven’t talked about it at all.”
She added, “I’m very happy to talk about it. I actually really like answering questions about it because it’s really interesting, and I am incredibly confused by it. I don’t get it.”
The “Happier Than Ever” singer then detailed her various tics, including wiggling her ear, raising her eyebrow, clicking her jaw, moving her head, opening her mouth and flexing various muscles in her arms.
“These are things you would never notice if you’re having a conversation with me, but for me, they’re very exhausting,” she said.
Eilish said she had been unhappy with her tics, but now, she told Letterman, they’re a “part” of her. “I have made friends with it, so now I’m pretty confident in it,” she said.
“So many people have it and you’d never know. A couple [other] artists have come forward and said, ‘I’ve always had Tourette’s,'” Eilish revealed. “And I’m not going to out them because they don’t want to talk about it. But that was really interesting to me because I was like, ‘You do? What?'”
(NEW YORK) — Police have identified a suspect in connection with the unprovoked fatal shooting of 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez on a Q train in New York City on Sunday, according to police sources.
The sources identified the wanted suspect as Andrew Abdullah, a 25-year-old man from Brooklyn with about 20 prior arrests, including an outstanding gun charge from last year. He also has prior arrests for assault, robbery, menacing and grand larceny, sources said.
Abdullah has three cases that are still pending, including an April arrest for fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property for allegedly being found with a stolen motorcycle, as well as a June 2021 arrest for violating a protective order and March 2021 arrest for assault.
Detectives have also recovered the gun used in the shooting.
It is believed the suspect handed the gun to a homeless man as he fled the Canal Street station. The homeless man then apparently sold the gun for $10 to a third person, who reported it to police, the sources said.
The New York Police Department released surveillance photos Monday of the suspect believed to have shot Enriquez taken shortly after he exited the subway.
The motive for the shooting is still unknown.
In January 2020, Abdullah was arrested as part of a gun-related case and in May 2017 he was charged with second-degree attempted murder as part of an 83-count federal indictment of the Harlem-based street gangs Fast Money and Nine Block. Abdullah was sentenced to three years in federal prison, but served just four months before being released in 2019.
Witnesses say the suspect, alleged to be Abdullah, was pacing back and forth in the last car of a Manhattan-bound train around 11:45 a.m. when he pulled out a gun and fired it at Enriquez unprovoked, according to NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.
The shooting comes a little over a month after a Brooklyn subway rider opened fire on a train car, wounding 10 people. The suspect in that shooting, Frank James, was arrested one day later in lower Manhattan.
Transit crime is up 62.5% in the city year-to-date from 2021, according to NYPD statistics.
(NEW YORK) — A baby formula shortage has escalated in recent months from a product recall to a national crisis, prompting emergency responses from business leaders and White House officials.
As of early May, 43% of U.S. baby formula was out of stock, according to the data firm Datasembly.
To help make up for the shortfall, the Biden administration on Sunday began flying in tens of thousands of pounds of baby formula from abroad in what it calls “Operation Fly Formula.” A day before, an apology in a Washington Post op-ed was issued by Robert Ford, the CEO of Abbott Nutrition, the nation’s largest baby formula producer.
The emergency has come on the heels of the voluntary shutdown in February of an Abbott factory in Sturgis, Michigan, where the company produces major brands of powdered formula like Similac and EleCare. The shutdown went into effect when four babies fell sick from bacterial disease after ingesting formula produced at the facility and two of the infants died. It remains unclear whether the bacteria that made the children ill came from the baby formula produced at the Michigan factory, but a Food and Drug Administration inspection of the facility found it fell short of adequate sanitation.
The root causes of the desperate situation stretch well beyond the last few months, supply chain experts told ABC News. Pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions led to barren store shelves, rigid international trade barriers impeded imports and market concentration left few alternate suppliers, they said.
“The scenario where you have a manufacturing problem that occurred at an Abbott facility in Michigan, those kinds of things happen all the time,” Nada Sanders, a professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, told ABC News. “Ultimately, we have very, very weak supply chains.”
Many families rely on baby formula for some portion of sustenance early in a child’s life. Almost 20% of babies consume infant formula before they reach two days of age, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a 2020 report. More than half of infants receive supplementary nutrition in addition to breastfeeding over their first three months, the report said. Some babies require formula to meet specific nutritional needs.
As with a host of products — from computer chips to lumber — the pandemic has snarled the supply chain for baby formula. Shortages of labor and raw materials have slowed production and hampered distribution, Sanders said. The disruption weakens the supply chain’s responsiveness to the sudden ups and downs of customer demand, she added.
“All of this is ultimately related to the COVID pandemic, and really two-and-a-half years of supply chain disruptions and backlogs of every kind possible,” Sanders said.
Even amid the widespread supply chain disruptions brought about by the coronavirus, few products have faced the crisis-level shortages observed with baby formula in recent weeks, said Sanders and Scott Lincicome, an economist at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.
One reason why the baby formula market has proven especially susceptible to shortages is the trade barriers and public health regulations that prevent major inflow of the products from abroad, Lincicome said. The U.S. imposes steep tariffs on baby formula. Plus, the FDA requires foreign manufacturers to abide by nutritional and labeling requirements.
In turn, 98% of baby formula consumed in the U.S. is produced domestically. When the Abbott factory shut down, the market lacked an international supply to fill the gap. Last week, the FDA announced “increased flexibilities” for the importation of baby formula in an effort to alleviate the shortage.
But the supply problems aren’t confined to overseas producers, Sanders and Lincicome said. They pointed to a key problem that hinders the responsiveness of the domestic baby formula industry: business concentration. Abbott, the top producer, accounts for about 48% of the U.S. formula market. In all, four companies — Abbott, Nestle USA, Perrigo and Mead Johnson Nutrition — control roughly 90% of the market.
Some critics, including Lincicome, have attributed the small number of market players largely to a federal nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC, which helps low-income families purchase baby formula. Roughly half of the baby formula bought in the U.S. goes through WIC, with about 1.2 million infants getting ahold of formula through the program. That scale grants WIC considerable power in the marketplace, Lincicome said.
WIC uses a system in which each state chooses a single company to be the sole provider of baby formula for all residents enrolled in the program. That approach reduces the price that WIC pays for baby formula, cutting the cost for taxpayers, Lincicome said. But the large size of each statewide contract prevents small companies from winning a bid and gaining a foothold, he added.
In response to the crisis, President Joe Biden signed a measure on Saturday that allows families enrolled in WIC to buy formula beyond what the program normally allows in emergency situations.
“Combine the trade wall with domestic concentration,” Lincicome said. “You have a situation where you end up having a few players in a closed market and when one of those players goes down, the other handful of players left can’t fill the gaps.”
He added: “And you lack access to global markets which might be able to fill that gap in the short term.”
Last week, Abbott and the FDA reached an agreement for the company to reopen the Michigan factory, which should eventually return U.S. baby formula supply back to normal, Sanders said. She predicted it would take three months to fully alleviate the shortage; Lincicome estimated eight weeks.
“Hopefully Abbott will be able to get their production out and get everything smoothly running and what’s taken by customers is replenished at the right cadence,” Sanders said. “Meaning no bumps.”
(NEW YORK) — Pfizer’s release of data showing its three-shot COVID-19 vaccine is 80% effective among children under the age of 5 is welcome news for parents anxious to get their young children vaccinated more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set to meet in June to review data from both Pfizer and Moderna, a COVID-19 vaccine could be widely available to everyone in the United States ages 6 months and older by July.
The news comes as the U.S. is experiencing another COVID-19 wave, with cases rising in nearly every state and official infection numbers up to more than 100,000 per day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In the U.S., 28% of 5- to 11-year-olds and 58% of 12- to 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ analysis of CDC data.
“I think we all want to be done with this pandemic but unfortunately, it’s not quite done with us,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice-chair of the AAP’s committee on infectious diseases. “We are in a much different place than we were two years ago in terms of both the therapeutics that are available to treat the disease and the vaccines, showing a decreased spread of the disease and a decrease in hospitalizations.”
O’Leary, also a pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital Colorado, spoke to ABC News’ Good Morning America to answer parents’ top trending questions about the COVID-19 vaccine and kids.
1. What does the Pfizer vaccine efficacy news mean?
Earlier this year, Pfizer moved forward with studying three doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for kids 6 months to under 5 years old after disappointing data on a two-dose vaccine.
The new data released by the company Monday shows the three-dose vaccine is effective in kids, which means the vaccine is one step closer to being authorized by the FDA, according to O’Leary.
“This was really the news we’ve been waiting for from Pfizer on whether or not this third dose was going to meet the requirements required from the FDA,” he said. “The immune response that the vaccine provided for the children in the trial was similar to the immune response that we saw in older adolescents and adults in who we know the vaccine is effective in preventing infection, hospitalization and death.”
In addition to being effective, the new data also shows the three-dose vaccine “appears to be safe,” O’Leary said.
2. What happens next for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for young kids?
Next month, FDA advisers will meet to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine applications for kids from both Pfizer and Moderna, which submitted its request to the FDA in April.
The FDA has tentatively scheduled the meetings for June 14 and 15, during which advisers will review applications for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 5 to 17 and ages 6 months to under 6 years, as well as Pfizer’s vaccine for kids ages 6 months to under 5 years.
Within one or two days of the FDA meetings, the applications go to a CDC advisory committee. From there, the director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, decides on whether or not to grant emergency use authorization for the vaccines.
With that timing, we could see a vaccine for kids under age 5 approved by the beginning of July, according to O’Leary.
Pfizer’s vaccine is currently available for people ages 5 and older, while Moderna’s vaccine is authorized for people ages 18 and older.
3. Do kids under 5 get the same vaccine as adults?
The dosage of the vaccine is different for children than it is for adults, but the vaccine itself is the same for everyone, according to O’Leary.
If authorized, Pfizer’s vaccine dosage for kids ages 6 months to under 5 years would be three shots of 3 micrograms each. Each dose is one-tenth the adult dose.
Moderna’s vaccine for kids under age 6, if authorized, would be a two-dose, 25-microgram shot, about one-quarter of the dose used for adults, given 28 days apart.
4. How do I know the COVID-19 vaccine is safe for my child?
Pfizer’s newly-released data on its three-dose vaccine for kids under age 5 showed “no significant safety” concerns, according to O’Leary.
The fact that a vaccine for the youngest children is coming after the vaccine has already been delivered to hundreds of millions of people around the world should bring comfort to parents, O’Leary said.
“There is no reason to expect in this age group that we’re going to have some kind of different safety profile than what we saw in children, for example, 5 and older, in whom millions and millions of doses have been given,” he said. “So we have a pretty good understanding of the safety profile.”
The CDC has also released multiple studies over the past year showing COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective for older children.
Overall, O’Leary said parents should remember that, based on data, the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine in protecting kids outweigh any potential risks.
“I think we all know that the disease is most severe in the elderly and people who have problems with their immune system, but that’s not to say that COVID-19 is a benign illness in children,” he said. “We’ve seen tens of thousands of hospitalizations in children, and the risk to children under 5, actually, for hospitalization is higher than it is for older children, so absolutely there is a need to protect those children with the vaccine.”
For parents of children of all ages who may be on the fence about getting their child vaccinated, O’Leary said to speak with your child’s pediatrician.
“The best thing you could do is make an appointment with your pediatrician and talk with them about about the vaccine,” he said. “I think it is important to get those kids vaccinated but, on the other hand, I do understand why parents have some questions, and your best source of information is going to be your child’s pediatrician.”
5. How long after having COVID-19 can my child get a vaccine?
If a child has not been vaccinated against COVID-19 and contracts the virus, they can get vaccinated “as soon as they’re out of their isolation period, based on when they were infected and had symptoms,” according to O’Leary.
“It doesn’t need to necessarily be the next day but, in general, as soon as as they can to provide that protection,” he said.
For people who are not vaccinated, CDC guidelines are to quarantine at home for five full days.
6. How do I know if my child needs a booster vaccine?
A booster dose of Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized earlier this month for children ages 5 to 11 years old.
A child in that age range must wait at least five months after completion of a primary series to receive the booster, according to the FDA.
“I do think it’s important,” O’Leary said of fully vaccinated people ages 5 and older receiving a booster dose. “The data have been fairly clear over the last several months, and particularly during this omicron wave, that this booster really matters in terms of prevention of the severe outcomes.”
7. What precautions should my family take until a vaccine for young kids is authorized?
O’Leary said families should continue to practice safety protocols including mask wearing for children ages 2 and older, hand-washing and social distancing.
“We know that crowded, indoor settings where people are not masked is one of the higher-risk places, so try to avoid those types of environments,” he said.
O’Leary also said parents should make sure their kids of all ages are up to date on all their vaccinations.
“Honestly, for children, a lot of the diseases, although we don’t see them anymore, are actually more severe in kids than COVID-19, things like measles,” he said. “Going into the summer is a perfect time to make an appointment with your pediatrician for a checkup and make sure your kids are up to date on their vaccines.”
