This weekend, Jennifer O. will pack up her car in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and drive her daughter more than two hours to a CVS clinic in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where she’s heard she might be able to secure a pediatric COVID-19 vaccine.

There are things Jennifer would rather be doing with that time — like taking her daughter to a birthday party — but she feels she has no choice. Jennifer hasn’t been able to find a vaccine for her daughter in Baton Rouge, despite the fact that COVID cases are on the rise across Louisiana . This is the first year she’s failed to secure a vaccine locally, even after scouring pharmacy websites and contacting her pediatrician.

Access to the shots has dried up in some states after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed the shot from the Centers for

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