US Surgeon General responds to Matthew McConaughey’s opposition on vaccine mandate for children

‘Many kids have died. Sadly, hundreds of children – thousands – have been hospitalised,’ Murthy said

US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy has responded to Matthew McConaughey’s opposition to the vaccine mandate for children.

On Tuesday (9 November), Murthy said that parents need to understand “Covid is not harmless in our children”. His comments follow after the Interstellar star stated that he “couldn’t mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids” without more information.

“Many kids have died. Sadly, hundreds of children – thousands – have been hospitalised, and as a dad of a child who has been hospitalised several years ago for another illness, I would never wish upon any parent they have a child that ends up in the hospital,” Murthy told CNN’s Erin Burnett during an appearance on OutFront.

“And the vaccines have shown in these trials for children five through 11 [that] they are more at 90 per cent effective in protecting our kids from symptomatic infection, and they are remarkably safe as well,” he added.

Murthy’s comments follow after McConaughey revealed that as of “right now” he is not vaccinating his own children.

The 52-year-old said at The New York Times DealBook summit on Tuesday (9 November) that both he and his wife are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and that they “chose” to receive the jabs instead of being told to get them.

(Getty Images for Global Citizen)

“Do I think that there’s any kind of scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no,” said the actor. “We all got to get off that narrative. There’s not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines.”

McConaughey, however, said that he will wait to find out more about the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines for young children before vaccinating his own kids.

“Right now, I’m not vaccinating mine, I’ll tell you that,” he said.

On 29 October, the US’s Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine for emergency use in children between the ages of five and 11.

McConaughey also said he had “quarantined harder” than his friends throughout the pandemic and that his family relied on a “heavy amount” of Covid-19 testing to limit the chances of infection.