By 9:30 a.m. Saturday, half an hour before the coronavirus vaccine clinic was set to open, all the parking spaces at the Hillcrest Recreation Center were taken. Three dozen children already were waiting to get shots. At the front of the line were families who got up before dawn to get there — many of them turned away from clinics the evening before.
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Jude Bien-Aimé got to a D.C. Health site 20 minutes after it opened Friday and found a line snaking around the building, he said. After waiting about an hour — taking turns in the car to warm up — they and scores of other people were told there were no more doses left. So on Saturday morning, they left their home in Deanwood early, getting a place in line 40 minutes before the doors opened.
“We have been anxious to get them shots from the beginning,” he said.
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It has been a long wait for a shot for 5-to-11-year-old children, months of quarantines and worrying and tugging masks back up and saying no — no to hugging grandparents, no to sleepovers, no to basketball tryouts.
“It’s been, like, 600 days,” said Alvin Richburg, whose 5-year-old daughter, Zoe, was swinging on her tummy, black tutu fluttering, on the playground. “It’s been a long time. I don’t know — I just want this all to end.”
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So the go-ahead Tuesday night from federal officials allowing the Pfizer-BioNTech shots to be given to millions of 5-to-11-year-olds had many parents in Washington dropping everything to stand in line. Nearby on Saturday morning, children tore around the playground, shouting and laughing, while others launched a pickup soccer game on a patch of grass.
It marked a turning point for many families: a welcome sense of relief, and anticipation.
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“This is why we do what we do,” said Patrick Ashley, senior deputy director at D.C. Health, bundled up in a knit cap as a colleague handed out numbered “tickets” to those in line. “I can’t wait to get mine!” a boy shouted.
“There’s mutual joy,” Ashley said. “The parents are happy; the kids are happy.”
One of the last families to get a shot the night before ordered about 10 pizzas to share with the others who were waiting, he said — a community celebration, shared by strangers.
Yet some parents have been hesitant about the vaccines, including in parts of the city hit hardest by the coronavirus. The pop-up clinics in neighborhoods, especially in Wards 7 and 8, are intended to make it easier for families, Ashley said, and some of the first were east of the Anacostia River. They will keep doing those, he said, along with outreach in schools and other efforts.
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“Some people in the neighborhood are skeptical,” Bien-Aimé said. “Some people are very skeptical.”
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Denise Williams, who lives in the Fort Dupont neighborhood, was disappointed with the rollout. She had waited about an hour at Fort Stanton on Friday with her three kids, she said, and got to Hillcrest early to be sure to get a shot for the oldest.
“A lot of these kids are going to be fully vaccinated by the holidays,” she said, looking at people ahead of her in line. “A lot of kids in Ward 7, Ward 8, won’t be.”
Richburg, who waited in line the night before, too, and had to leave when the clinic ran out of doses, said, “They didn’t do this the right way.” At the Fort Stanton Recreation Center in Ward 8, which hosted a clinic Friday, “there was nobody from that neighborhood in that neighborhood getting shots. You started in Ward 8,” he said, “but you didn’t serve Ward 8.”
How to find a covid vaccine for a 5-to-11-year-old in the D.C. region
Richburg, a cybersecurity consultant who lives in Navy Yard, said city officials should have done more outreach. He didn’t know about the vaccine clinics until he read about it on a school mailing list — and his children go to a school in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, he said.
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But with vaccine supplies scarce in these early days of the rollout, and worry for their family’s health abundant, many people were anxiously trying to find a dose.
Kristin Abbott, who left the Brightwood neighborhood in Northeast Washington early enough to be in line with her two children at 8:45 a.m. in Southeast, said they had gone to a nearby site the night before, but it ran out of vaccine doses. “I think there’s a domino effect,” she said, as people get shut out and search farther afield.
They have been dreading the emails from school about cases, and the anxious days between tests and results. They couldn’t find appointments until late November. Her husband, Scott Abbott, said their son, Lincoln, is about to turn 11 this month, “and he told us all he wants for his birthday is the vaccine.”
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Tyler Loughnane, who’s 6 and had a camo mask on, was eager to get vaccinated and to tell his teacher at Brent Elementary School on nearby Capitol Hill that he had done it. Asked how it went, he held his thumb sideways: great to get it, but it hurt.
Jameson Bien-Aimé, who’s 8, has been worried about spreading the coronavirus to grandparents who live with the family. Jude Bien-Aimé said an older son, who’s 25 and a student at Florida State University, didn’t get vaccinated — despite the concerted efforts of his wife, a pediatrician — and got so sick with covid that he couldn’t walk.
His younger sons, Jameson and Jeremiah, who is 10, are still at an age where they’re afraid of a needle, he said. But they wanted to come.
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Every now and then, cheering and clapping would burst out from the clinic as families celebrated, letting go of some long-held worries.
When Jameson and Jeremiah finally got to the front of the line, they got their shots and pulled on the red vaccine T-shirts from D.C. Health, their dad said. It was 90 minutes after they got there, and well worth the chilly wait: “They’re very excited,” he said. “No ‘ouch!’ or anything.”