Is the pandemic over or not?President Joe Biden sparked the debate when he declared it is, then Dr. Anthony Fauci quickly disputed the claim.“I think the truth is somewhere in between,” said TriHealth infectious disease expert Dr. Stephen Blatt. “I do think it’s time we learn to live with this virus.”Blatt said dealing with the pandemic and with the virus are two different things. “I think it’s going to be really hard to define when the pandemic ends because we’re going to be dealing with this virus forever,” Blatt said.“I think we’re moving in the right direction. I don’t think we’re there yet,” said the Health Collaborative’s Tiffany Mattingly.Right now, in this region, there are 177 people in local hospitals with COVID-19, 20 are in the ICU and six are on ventilators. That compares with the peak when there were 1,033 people in local hospitals with COVID-19, 196 in the ICU and 141 on ventilators.“Part of the question is, what does it mean that the pandemic is over? It doesn’t mean COVID has gone away," Mattingly said.

Doctors are expecting kids as young as 12 years old to be getting the Pfizer vaccine locally as soon as Wednesday or Thursday after the Food and Drug Administration made it available through new emergency approval.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the states have to sign off on the approval which is expected to happen very quickly.“Having the vaccine available now for 12 and above is going to really be a big step forward to make our return to normal much quicker,” Dr. Robert Frenck said.Frenck led the Pfizer trials for adults at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and is now working on research on children down to age 5.“I’m really excited about having the vaccine available for 12 and above. I’m going to be more excited when we have it for younger children,” Frenck said.Frenck expects the vaccine for those ages 5 to 11 to be approved by the fall.The biggest impact of the approval is that many parents are now facing the decision to vaccinate their children.Cincinnati Children’s chief of staff Patty Manning said the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks.The American Pediatrics Association numbers show 3.8 million kids have had COVID-19, 15,000 have been hospitalized, more than 300 have died.Cincinnati is not immune to the trends.“Every day here at Children’s Hospital, since I can’t remember when, we’ve had at least one, if not many children hospitalized with COVID. That is the reality,” Manning said. “We can’t promise you, neither Dr. Frenck nor myself could ever promise you your child won’t get COVID and that it wouldn’t be serious, But we can promise you with the vaccine the chance of that happening is significantly reduced.”