By LIND­SEY TAN­NER and ANG­IE WANG | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

(AP) — Lit­tle Fletch­er Pack woke up Mon­day morn­ing and asked: “Is to­day vac­cine day?”  For the 3-year-old from Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na, the an­swer was yes.

The na­tion’s in­fants, tod­dlers and pre-school­ers are fi­nal­ly get­ting their chance at COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion as the U.S. rolls out shots for tots this week. Ship­ments ar­rived in some lo­ca­tions over the week­end and some spots, in­clud­ing a Wal­greens in South Car­oli­na and an­oth­er in New York City, opened up ap­point­ments for Mon­day.

Fletch­er’s moth­er said that once her son is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, he can fi­nal­ly go bowl­ing and vis­it the near­by chil­dren’s mu­se­um.

“He’s nev­er re­al­ly played with an­oth­er kid in­side be­fore,” McKen­zie Pack said. “This will be a re­al­ly big change for our fam­i­ly.”

She be­gan seek­ing an ap­point­ment last week as U.S. reg­u­la­tors took steps to OK the vac­cines for kids 6 months to 5 years old.

“It’s just re­lief,” said Pack. “With this vac­cine, that’ll be his best shot at go­ing back to nor­mal and hav­ing a nor­mal child­hood.”

The Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion green­light­ed the Mod­er­na and Pfiz­er kid shot s on Fri­day and the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion rec­om­mend­ed them Sat­ur­day. In the U.S., COVID-19 vac­cines were first test­ed and giv­en in late 2020 to health care work­ers and old­er adults. Teens and school-age kids were added last year.

“This is cer­tain­ly an ex­cit­ing mo­ment in what has be­come a very long cam­paign to vac­ci­nate peo­ple against COVID-19,” said Dr. Matthew Har­ris, an emer­gency room pae­di­a­tri­cian at North­well Co­hen Chil­dren’s Med­ical Cen­ter in New York.

Many par­ents have been anx­ious­ly await­ing the roll­out, and Har­ris said shots for his own 9-month-old are a “mat­ter of when, not if.”

Rough­ly 18 mil­lion young­sters un­der 5 are el­i­gi­ble.

“It’s just a huge step to­ward nor­mal­cy,” said Dr. De­bra Lan­glois, pae­di­a­tri­cian at Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Health C.S. Mott Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

“We’re two-plus years in­to this pan­dem­ic and there’s things that my 4-year-old has nev­er been able to do,” Lan­glois said.

The fam­i­ly skipped a trip to Dis­ney­land and a pop­u­lar Michi­gan va­ca­tion is­land be­cause the fer­ry ride to Mack­inac Is­land would mean min­gling with un­masked pas­sen­gers.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties and pae­di­a­tri­cians hailed the mo­ment. But they al­so ac­knowl­edged that get­ting some par­ents on board may be a chal­lenge giv­en dis­ap­point­ing vac­ci­na­tion rates — about 30% — in school-age kids.

The Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pe­di­atrics and Amer­i­can Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion were among physi­cian groups that en­cour­aged doc­tors and fam­i­lies to get young chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed.

The CDC ad­vis­es vac­ci­na­tion even for those who al­ready had COVID-19 to pro­tect against re­in­fec­tion, and says it is OK to get oth­er vac­cines at the same time. For the lit­tlest kids, there’s Pfiz­er’s three-shot se­ries or Mod­er­na’s two shots.

In New York’s large­ly Lati­no neigh­bour­hood of Wash­ing­ton Heights, Dr. Juan Tapia Men­doza’s clin­ic has or­dered 300 dos­es of the tot-sized vac­cines. He said he needs ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­ri­als that di­rect­ly ad­dress mis­in­for­ma­tion spread­ing among par­ents.

His ap­proach will be to tell par­ents, “if they were my kids, I would vac­ci­nate them.”

“Be­cause the virus is still around. A lot of peo­ple are still dy­ing be­cause of coro­n­avirus Kids do get in­fect­ed and some kids get se­vere­ly af­fect­ed and no­body wants to see a child very sick.”

Some hos­pi­tals planned vac­ci­na­tion events lat­er this week. Chica­go is among lo­ca­tions that of­fer COVID-19 shots in peo­ple’s homes and planned to open reg­is­tra­tion this week for home ap­point­ments for in­fants and oth­er young chil­dren, said Mari­bel Chavez-Tor­res, a deputy com­mis­sion for the city’s De­part­ment of Pub­lic Health.

Dr. Pam Zeit­land, di­rec­tor of pae­di­atric med­i­cine at Na­tion­al Jew­ish Health in Den­ver, rec­om­mends par­ents get their kids vac­ci­nat­ed as soon as pos­si­ble.

“Some par­ents are afraid that the younger the child, the more vul­ner­a­ble they might be to vac­cine side ef­fects,” Zeit­land said, but that’s not what Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na stud­ies found. Side ef­fects were sim­i­lar to what is seen with oth­er child­hood vac­cines — fever, ir­ri­tabil­i­ty and fa­tigue.

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AP Med­ical Writer Car­la K. John­son con­tributed.

The As­so­ci­at­ed Press Health and Sci­ence De­part­ment re­ceives sup­port from the Howard Hugh­es Med­ical In­sti­tute’s De­part­ment of Sci­ence Ed­u­ca­tion. The AP is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for all con­tent.