FDA authorizes a Pfizer booster shot for children ages 12 to 15
Source: NPR
The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of a Pfizer-BioNTech booster in adolescents 12 to 15 years old.
The agency also shortened the time between the completion of primary vaccination of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and a booster dose to five months from six.
Finally, the FDA allowed for a third dose of vaccine in immunocompromised children 5 to 11 years of age.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/01/03/1069886530/fda-authorizes-a-pfizer-booster-shot-for-children-ages-12-to-15
Short article.
I expect CDC will respond quickly to finish off the approvals. Note immunocompromised 5 - 11 can now get a booster and the recommended time interval change between the 2nd dose and the booster is now 5 months instead of 6.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Last night, the city of Philadelphia's public school system, that insisted on "in person" (almost to the point of "no matter what", with a bare equivocation of "depending on if it is safe to do so), announced that 77 schools would go to "virtual" this morning. And as of early this morning, they added 4 more schools to "virtual". The school system has had a mask mandate in place since the start of the schools in the fall and a vax mandate for teachers and staff. However there were reports that the masking was often not enforced in some schools (both teachers and students 
).
What had happened is that 1,100 teachers had called out from work last evening due to having contracted COVID-19 over the holidays and were in quarantine (out of 13,000 teachers), so there would not be enough coverage (even with subs) to allow those schools to open normally. The schools were closed for students yesterday for a previously-scheduled full day teacher "professional day".
I expect it will only get worse. 
I mentioned that we've had outbreaks in schools here, but nothing like this! The worst I heard was that the entire fifth grade had to quarantine at a nearby school, heard this from a woman who works in the school and since it involved her granddaughter, she was mad as hell, figured it had to be a teacher - like gym, music or art - who had contact with every kid in that grade. And the little girl got it, as did her brother and her Dad (the lady's son) was really sick.
But mask mandates have been in place at the local school since this pandemic started. Even when the mandate was lifted between July-November, I still saw kids in masks in the stores, they've gotten used to them. When I took my brother for his second shot last May, I saw some young teens there with their Moms (I sat in the parking lot), so I was hoping that kids would get them in time for the start of the school year.
I have a friend who substitute teaches and she drove across the entire state to get vaccinated last January since that was the closest place, this was before it was available locally. 
but not like this - although it was sortof expected after Thanksgiving and then the winter break. And that is when Omicron came blazing in. 
And I remember when they first "publicly" announced the roll out of the vaccines here last January (after they had a limited start with first responders) and had come up with a "phased" rollout going forward, and the teachers were put near the top of the list for priority (the schools were on all-virtual at the time). The school district even set up mass-vaccination sites for teachers and support personnel at the time. And as they added more and more occupations to the priority list, that kept bumping me further and further down the list, along with them initially not checking residency of those getting the vaccine, so many many people from the suburbs came into the city and got vaccinated with our vaccine allotment instead of their own County's allotment, reducing the amount available for those of us who live in the city.
I had signed up for the city's vaccine list as soon as they created the online signup website in January and didn't hear anything from them until AFTER I was able to find a pharmacy that had just gotten approval from the city to do vaccines in mid-March, which is what I used to get my first dose. I had added my name to their contact list when I found they were listed as doing them "in the future", and a week later received an email telling me that I could schedule, which I immediately did for the same day. 
(that was on St. Patrick's Day - March 17, 2021). What was good was that the pharmacy was just a few miles from where I live and was in a little shopping plaza that I had been to regularly for many years (my old pharmacy had been at that plaza before it closed years ago).
Then a few days later, the city sent me a notice that I could schedule a time at the PA Convention Center mass vaccination site ($16 per hour parking). And I was like, um no. 
Like you said, just in time for Omicron. But by lifting the mandate last July, that was just in time for "tourist season" here and when I drove up north on the main road that goes through Lake George Village, I saw license plates from as far away as Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Utah - not to mention that the streets wee packed, like they are every summer, with no masks in sight. Up till that point, we'd had a mask mandate to enter any business for over a year and people had gotten used to it. When it was reinstated less than a month ago, we had to start all over.
I have 2 friends who work at the local hospital, one in the ER and another in the office, who got the Pfizer last January when it was offered to all hospital employees if they drove an hour downstate at a major hospital to get it. Plus, they got a $100 bonus for getting it. 
It wasn't offered locally to the public till late February- CVS had the Moderna. But appointments filled up fast and I had to drive to the next county to get mine. So I got the Moderna in Saratoga at the end of February and March. And I got my booster at the beginning of December at a nearby CVS. At that time, I was the only one there.
after lifting it for "fully vaccinated" people last June 11th - https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2021/05/19/philadelphia-ending-mask-mandate-fully-vaccinated.html
When schools started the last week of August, the mandate applied for them. But since the surrounding counties and states (NJ & DE) that have people who work and/or shop here, lacked mandates, the back and forth across the county and state lines have had impacts here. Right now Jersey is surging in cases and some municipalities there are finally instituting or re-instituting indoor mask mandates.
And what happened here was that some pharmacies like Riteaid locations in the city, had "glitches" (supposed) in their signup systems where they were outright rejecting city resident zipcodes and accepting only suburban zips. There were articles about city residents trying to sign up with eligible criteria (age, medical conditions) who would put their real zips in and get rejected and then would sign up again with a suburban zip with the identical criteria and immediately receive the options to schedule appointments. Similar nonsense happened with CVS and Walgreens - https://whyy.org/articles/how-rite-aids-glitch-helped-suburban-residents-get-phillys-vaccine-supply/
By Ryan Briggs Nina Feldman March 4, 2021
(snip)
But West Philly resident and Rite Aid customer Kelly Chancey said there was more to the story. Her 43-year-old husband has a kidney disease granting him priority vaccination status. However, when he tried to make a vaccine appointment at his neighborhood Rite Aid on the company’s online registration site, he was informed he did not qualify.
The couple was then perplexed to discover that, simply by entering a relative’s suburban address, her husband qualified for vaccinations at all Rite Aid locations in the city.“When I found this glitch, I was very frustrated,” Chancey said. “Because it seemed like lots of Philly residents were missing out on the vaccine.”
Ultimately, Chancey’s husband was invited to a vaccine clinic at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania due to his priority condition. But for many other Philadelphians, the glitch remains a problem. In an online Facebook group hosting discussions about vaccine access, one person reported struggling to get her father a vaccine using his Philadelphia address. When she popped in a false suburban ZIP code, she got the same result as the Chanceys.
“When I put my dad’s info into the site, it rejected him. He lives in Philly, is 67, and has cancer and high blood pressure,” the user wrote. “When I put his info into the site and say he lives in any suburb, it says he qualifies.”
I experienced the exact same problem trying to sign up at all of the local chain pharmacies here at the time (including the Riteaid I normally go to). It kept coming up "not eligible" and I knew I was.
Fortunately when it came time for my booster in November, I had no problem getting it from my Riteaid that I use for my other scripts and did it as a "walk-in" (they had set aside an hour each day for walk-ins without needing to sign up for an appointment and I was able to get a flu shot at the same time).
Philadelphia gets its vaccine allotment directly from the federal government (because we have been part of a special vaccine program with the feds since I think the 1990s so they deal directly with us) and that allotment is separate from the rest of the state's allotment, where the state distributes theirs to the other 66 counties .
The sign on the entrances (when I read it) said that they were using "the honor system," good luck with that! I felt a little weird still wearing my mask, figuring I would be viewed as anti-vaxx, but aren't the anti-vaxxers also anti mask? And one of the employees at the nearby gas station/convenience store noticed the vaccination sticker on my jacket and assumed that I'd just gotten vaccinated at the nearby mall site and told me that I didn't need to wear my mask!
And that really sucks that you had such a hard time just getting it. Nobody questioned me even though I was from up the road, but at the Saratoga CVS there was hardly a crowd and when I went back for my second shot, there was only one other person after me. Of course, up here, we see a couple of Covid deaths on the front page of the local paper almost every day and they're usually listed as unvaccinated, two yesterday, both in their 50s. Even after a year
I never felt out of place with wearing a mask when I was in a store - even when I shopped in the adjoining suburban county, which has some stores I go to often since they are close (I am not far from the city line), and where that county has no mandates. Whenever I saw the maskless, I kept my distance, moved quickly, got what I needed, and got out fast. I always double-masked but my last outing, I used a N95 and will do so from now on until this wave dies down (when I'll probably go back to double-masking to save the N95s).
The local paper announced this morning that our cases have gone up 700% since the first Omicron case was announced (some of it due to delayed reporting over New Year's).
In 5 days we almost doubled from this (right after Christmas) -
to this (right after New Year's) -
And the hospitals are starting to fill up - mostly with unvaccinated adults but also with some more susceptible vaccinated who probably had a lower antibody response from the vaccines. We've also had a surge of hospitalizations of children who were either unvaccinated but eligible, unvaccinated and were not eligible yet, or who had not yet received their 2nd dose of vaccine.
