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Children in Oakland, Calif., who are over the age of 12 and remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus by next year will be transferred to independent study schools or dropped from public school enrollment. The Board of Education for the district approved the plan on Wednesday. (Beals, 10/28)

Children as young as 5 may be able to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in the U.S. as soon as next week. While some parents aren't sure how they feel about this, others are waiting eagerly for a chance to protect their children from COVID-19. But federal agencies can't be rushed. Here's what still needs to happen before the Pfizer-BioNTech shots can start going into kids' arms. (Simmons-Duffin and Hurt, 10/28)

A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee’s vote Tuesday to recommend a lower-dose Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use authorization for children ages 5 to 11 means the shot could be available as soon as next week, yet only a minority of parents say they plan  to get their children vaccinated. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll published Thursday found that less than 30 percent of parents of 5- to 11-year-olds plan to get their children vaccinated. Another third of parents reported they plan to wait to see how the vaccine performs outside of clinical trials, and roughly another third do not plan to get their kids vaccinated against Covid at all.  (Sullivan, 10/29)

The Covid-19 vaccine is likely to be authorized for children 5 to 11 years old within days, which means parents who have been eagerly awaiting the chance to vaccinate their kids will soon get the opportunity. But those kids may not be as excited about the shots as their parents. A fear of needles, or trypanophobia, is common in children — a majority have it, one statistical analysis found. (Chuck, 10/28)

The cheerleading team at a Los Angeles County high school has been put on hiatus because it is the apparent center of a COVID-19 outbreak. An email sent to Valencia High School families on Tuesday by principal Pete Getz said 33 cases have been confirmed among students and staff. Most of the infected students are cheerleaders. Valencia High, in Santa Clarita, has an enrollment of about 2,600 students. The positive tests “started to pop up last week and … increased through the weekend,” school district spokesman Dave Caldwell told TV station KABC. (10/28)

A startling statistic emerged as advisers to the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday debated use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in children ages 5 to 11. According to one federal scientist, by June an estimated 42 percent of these children had already been infected with the coronavirus. That figure was much higher than anyone expected. But the estimate, which was from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, might have overstated the percentage of children who were infected, several experts said in interviews. Among other flaws, the percentage was based on tests known to have a high rate of “false positives” — signaling the presence of antibodies where there are none. (Mandavilli, 10/28)