Only Pfizer Vaccine Approved for 16- and 17-year-olds

By Anthony Birritteri, Editor-in-Chief On Apr 19, 2021

Today, New Jersey residents age 16 and older are eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine. However, those between the ages of 16 and 17 can only receive the Pfizer vaccine, based on US Food & Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization guidelines.

“If you are 16 or 17 years of age, you must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian to be vaccinated,” Gov. Phil Murphy said at today’s COVID-19 press briefing. “Across the state, there are hundreds of locations to be vaccinated, from our six mega-sites to our federally operated community-based vaccination center at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, to hundreds of doctors’ offices, healthcare centers and pharmacies. There are now more than 800 different vaccine locations in the state, and 98.7% of all state residents live within five5 miles of where they can get vaccinated.”

Murphy encouraged everyone to visit www.covid19.nj.gov/finder to find a center close to where one lives. The site is updated multiple times an hour, listing appointment openings as they become available.

“Early this morning, the vaccine finder was reporting 68 locations with availability representing thousands of open appointments,” Murphy said. “Everyone who had registered online through the state’s vaccine scheduling system is now receiving an email about vaccine eligibility expansion. A total of 2.8 million email reminders were delivered as of noon.”

More than 700,000 appointments have been made directly through the state’s vaccine scheduling system website at http:covidvaccine.nj.gov.

“Even with today’s final expansion, millions of residents who previously had been made eligible for a vaccine have already received at least their first shot. That is now more than 6 million shots,” Murphy said, adding that, as of this morning, there are 2.5 million fully vaccinated individuals in the state.

“We are more than halfway of our initial goal of 4.7 million fully vaccinated folks by the end of June,” the governor said.

Additionally, Murphy reported 2,323 positive PCR and presumed positive antigen tests results today. The one-day positivity rate for test results is 8.18% (based on 42,217 PCR tests recorded last Thursday), while the rate of transmission is .92.

Meanwhile, Dr. Christina Tan, state epidemiologist, said there are 1,936 reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on variants of concern in the state: 1,815 of the B117 UK variant; 36 reports of the P1 Brazilian variant; 30 reports of the B1351 South African variant; and 82 reports of the B1427 and B1429 variants that have emerged from California.

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