(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved Pfizer boosters for 12- to 15-year-olds.

The moves comes as schools reopen after the holiday break.

In a release, the FDA said it has amended the emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine to also shorten the time between the completion of primary vaccination of the Pfizer vaccine and a booster dose to at least five months, instead of six, and to allow for a third primary series dose for certain immunocompromised children 5 through 11 years of age.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — Amid pushback from some public health officials on new Centers for Disease Control guidance for individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19, which does not require a negative test to end isolation after five days, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, said changes to the guidance are being considered.

“You’re right there has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration. The CDC is very well aware that there has been some pushback about that,” Fauci told This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

He continued, “Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that. And I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.”

The CDC issued new guidelines for those who test positive on Tuesday, recommending a five-day isolation period, if asymptomatic at that point, followed by five days of masking when around other people.

The CDC said in a statement: “The change is motivated by science demonstrating that the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after. Therefore, people who test positive should isolate for five days and, if asymptomatic at that time, they may leave isolation if they can continue to mask for five days to minimize the risk of infecting others.”

Some prominent public health officials, including former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, criticized the new guidelines. The nation’s largest nurses’ union and a major flight attendant union also expressed dissatisfaction with the new guidelines.

“Regardless of what CDC says, you really should try to obtain an antigen test (I know – easier said than done) and confirm it’s negative prior to leaving isolation and quarantine. There’s not a scientist or doctor I’ve met yet who wouldn’t do this for themselves/their family,” Adams tweeted.

The revised guidelines come as the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. reaches record levels. The CDC recorded more than 580,000 cases in the U.S. on Thursday, a pandemic record. That number shattered Wednesday’s record of about 488,000.

However, Fauci said Sunday the time has come to focus less on case counts, as “infections become less severe.” Instead, he said, “it is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations.”

As cases have skyrocketed, hospitalizations and deaths have not apparently followed the trend. Fauci expressed optimism about emerging evidence that the omicron variant could be less damaging, although he cautioned “hospitalizations are often late, lagging indicators.”

Even with the rising case numbers, Fauci said he believes it’s the correct decision to return children to in-person schooling after the holiday break as “it’s very clear there are really serious effects about” children not having a physical presence — and because most teachers are vaccinated and children 5 and up are eligible for COVID vaccinations.

“I plead with parents to please seriously consider vaccinating your children, wearing masks in the school setting, doing tests to stay,” he added. “I think all those things put together, it’s safe enough to get those kids back to school, balanced against the deleterious effects of keeping them out.”

Despite some promising data on omicron, Fauci warned there remains a heightened potential for stress on the nation’s hospitals and health care workers.

“We’ve got to be careful about that. Because even if you have a less of a percentage of severity, when you have multi, multi, multifold more people getting infected, the net amount is, you’re still gonna get a lot of people that are going to be needing hospitalization. And that’s the reason why we’re concerned about stressing and straining the hospital system,” Fauci told Stephanopoulos.

Still, Fauci expressed hope that what he described as a “severe surge” will peak within a few weeks.

“One of the things that we hope for, George, is that this thing will peak after a period of a few weeks and turn around,” Fauci told Stephanopoulos. “We’ve seen that happen in South Africa with a head of major surge, but as quickly as the surge went up, it turned around.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Hundreds to thousands of calls come in to the Disability Information and Access Line (DIAL) each week from disabled people across the country with questions about COVID-19, vaccinations, testing spots and more.

As one of the first call centers to focus specifically on the needs of disabled people, the federally funded hotline continues to pick up speed, filling a service previously unmet, according to the line’s director Sara Clark. The more people know about it, she says, the more calls they’re fielding.

“It’s important for people with disabilities to know that they can turn to a trusted source for accurate information,” Clark said.

DIAL was created in May 2021 and serviced and supported by national disability advocacy groups.

The call center has since been inundated with requests to assist disabled people in getting vaccinated, finding vaccination sites, in-home vaccination availability, educating callers about vaccine information, and overcoming physical or systemic barriers to accessing the vaccine and booster shots.

“Now that the word about us, it’s showing us that there’s a lot more people that have needed this but didn’t necessarily know about it,” Clark said.

The CDC reports that disabled adults were more likely to endorse the vaccine as protection against COVID, but are more likely to report difficulties in getting vaccinated than did adults without a disability.

Some 82.4% of disabled people have at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to 85.3% of non-disabled adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among disabled adults over the age of 65, the gap in vaccination widens to about five percentage points.

“The disability community didn’t have a national call center until DIAL was created,” said Sandy Markwood, the CEO of the national disability and elderly advocacy organization USAging. “It focuses primarily on COVID but people are also calling looking for supportive services, which are needed now more than ever.”

The effort was funded by the U.S. Administration for Community Living and the CDC but is being run by USAging and other disability advocacy networks such as the National Disability Rights Network, the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities and more.

Some 61 million adults in the United States live with a disability, the CDC reports — that’s about 1 in 4 adults who have some type of disability.

Curt Decker, the executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, said the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted some of the ways that ableism in policies and procedures has impacted access to healthcare and safety for disabled people.

He said that the disabled community is often “left behind” in disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic is just the latest example of this.

“You’ve really got to think through all the different populations, different needs and design your programs to meet that whole range of people,” said Decker. “Surprise, surprise — here comes a pandemic and we didn’t initially plan how our response is going to impact these very vulnerable populations.”

Disabled people have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic: “the increased risk of poor outcomes from the disease itself, reduced access to routine health care and rehabilitation, and the adverse social impacts of efforts to mitigate the pandemic,” the CDC reports.

The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing oppression on the disabled community. The World Health Organization notes that disabled people are more likely to be older, poorer, and have comorbidities — all of which increase the risk of severe consequences from the virus.

“The disability community is very diverse, with all kinds of disabilities,” Decker said. “Unfortunately, we’ve discovered that there are some people that are just not thinking about the population and what their needs are.”

Markwood says that the lack of access to reliable information and vaccination sites has hampered vaccination efforts among this demographic.

“There was a lot of misinformation about what the impact of vaccines would be on people who had disabilities,” Markwood said.

For people with intellectual disabilities and for people who are immunocompromised to some degree, advocates say that the fear of vaccination, lack of understanding of medical jargon, and lack of communication from doctors on individual health impacts was greatly unaddressed.

Many of the people calling DIAL’s hotline, Clark says, are just looking for information and insight.

“Maybe the initial question would be: ‘where can I get vaccinated?'” Clark said. “Then, it’s the ‘how’ of getting there, getting the transportation. In some cases, people need assistance with getting into the appointment, waiting there, knowing what to expect next, and the peer support that our Centers for Independent Living offer.”

Then come the issue of physically accessing the vaccine.

“If a person is using a wheelchair, will they be able to get to the vaccination site?” Clark said. “If it’s a person who has sensory issues, they might get overwhelmed with a lot of people or a lot of noises or a situation they’re not used to.”

She added, “If they’re trying to get into a spot that you know, wasn’t wheelchair accessible or they they’re a person who needs American Sign Language, but they’re not able to communicate with people there — they could also call us. We’ve trained and prepare people for that.”

Some people with disabilities live in group homes or detention facilities, some cannot verbally communicate, some need transportation or communication assistance, Decker and Markwood said.

Some people are homebound or are under the guardianship of someone who may be against vaccines, they added.

Many factors create hostile or challenging scenarios for the vaccination rollout among disabled patients: if vaccination spots are difficult to travel to or navigate; if at-home vaccine administration is hard to come across; if a care provider or guardian is not adequately relaying accurate information or if medical information is not being understood or if websites and call centers are not disability-friendly.

“We actually went into a group home in one state where the residents wanted to be vaccinated, and the provider wouldn’t do it — so we had to get a mobile unit out there from the local health department could give them access to the vaccine,” Decker said.

CDC states that reducing these barriers to vaccine scheduling and making vaccination sites more accessible “might improve vaccination rates among persons with disabilities.”

The CDC has started acting on this by funding the Administration on Community Living’s efforts to connect with the aging and disabled — which includes backing DIAL.

Considering the ever-increasing demand for DIAL’s services, there is still a clear need for resources to address the needs that are holding disabled people back from vaccination access.

“[Call center users] are so happy that there’s someone to answer the phone because so often they call places and it’s just an automated message,” Clark said. “They are really just happy and grateful that there is someone at the other end of the line that can listen to them and hear their needs and not only hear their needs, but also point them in the right direction.”

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