This is on point, I'm Kimberly Atkins' store. This week, children under five years old began to get their first COVID-19 vaccines, a milestone in the pandemic.

Here's Surgeon General Vivek Murphy speaking on MSNBC yesterday.

This is a really big moment in our fight against COVID, and especially for parents, parents like me who've got kids under five and who've been waiting for an opportunity to protect their children.

We now have vaccines available for every age group six months in older in the United States.

And what that means is that we know these vaccines are particularly effective at protecting against the worst outcomes of COVID, hospitalization and death.

And that's why this is such a big deal.

A big deal and a reminder that more than two years in, the pandemic is not over. Now, Omicron sub variants are being detected, a growing number of people are coming down with COVID two or three times, while others continue to struggle with long COVID.

So today, on point, we'll talk about what we now know about COVID-19 and what we can expect as the pandemic evolves.

Listeners, we want to hear from you during this hour. Do you have any questions about any of the recent COVID news that you've been hearing about?

Do you have any experiences that you want to share regarding experiencing a reinfection or having to wait for vaccines to become available for your youngest children?

Join the conversation by leaving us your comments on social media. We are at on point radio, on Facebook and Twitter.

And to help us address these questions is Cody Meisner. He's chief of division of pediatric infectious disease at Tufts Children's Hospital.

He's also a member of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, also known as VerPAC. Dr. Meisner, welcome to on point.

Thank you, Kim. It's my pleasure to be here with you today.

So as we're hearing about all of these new sub variants, first I just want to ask with everything ongoing vaccinations, long COVID, the mutation of the virus, is this the new normal? Is COVID here to stay?

I think there, yes, I think there will be SARS-CoV-2 or the cause of COVID-19 will be around for the foreseeable future. I think that this is a coronavirus that's very capable of looting our immunity.

And I think it will become increasingly persistent. Although my thoughts are that this will become less and less virulent and it will become more contagious, and it will probably develop a seasonal pattern as other coronaviruses do.

So I want to start off with this news about vaccines being now available to children under five. So far it seems that we've learned that the youngest children have not been the biggest spreaders of COVID-19.

Why is it important, so important, for children to get this vaccine?

That's a very important point that you're making here. And I think that, well first of all, it's important to recognize that this is an 18-month anniversary of the availability of messenger RNAs.

They first became available in the middle of December 2020. And these are absolutely remarkable vaccines that are amazingly safe and effective. And everyone, every adult should avail herself or himself of this vaccine.

Now, the issue is that this virus is going to continue to mutate. All viruses, particularly the so-called RNA viruses, mutate.

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