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The Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs of the Government of Andalusia, through the Andalusian Health Service and the General Directorate of Public Health and Pharmaceutical Regulation, has extracted the data on hospitalization of minors caused by Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV, main cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia) on approximate dates of 2022 and 2023.

These figures have revealed a drop in the number of hospitalizationsboth conventional and ICU beds, 80.82%.

In this sense, experts agree that the immunization against RSV launched by the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs at the end of September has had a decisive influence on the decrease in the number of admissions.

Thus, if on December 12, 2022 there had been 245 admissions of minors due to bronchiolitis, of which 48 were in the ICU; The figure as of December 7, 2023 drops to 47 admissions, of which 11 are in the ICU.

Total, 38,907 Andalusian infants have been immunized since September 25 when the campaign started. Of these, around 26,000 correspond to the group born between April and September 2023. A group that has already reached 93.3% coverage.

Regarding the latter, Salud y Consumo thanks parents and guardians for exercising responsibility and commitment to the protection of their children. Likewise, it recognizes the work of health professionals for the development of this campaign normally and without incident.

In the same way, makes a appeal to parents and guardians who have not yet immunized their children to make an appointment to have the dose administered.

Along these lines, they emphasize that infants under six months old, as well as premature infants, have a greater risk of developing severe bronchiolitis.

The immunization campaign against RSV 2023-2024 is aimed at children born between April 1 and September 30, 2023 (group 1A), newborns born since October 1 (group 1B), as well as children under a year with a history of prematurity of less than 35 weeks (group 2) and other infants with very high-risk chronic pathologies who are up to 24 months (group 3).

Last year, infections due to this virus kept 301 minors hospitalized in Andalusia at the same time (during the highest peak that occurred in November). And, in total, according to records from the Andalusian Health Service, 2,581 children under one year of age required hospital admission in 2022 due to RSV.

Andalusia administers for the first time the monoclonal antibody against RSV – called Nirsevimab, with the commercial name Beyfortus.

In this way, the autonomous community continues to focus on health prevention, with one of the most advanced vaccination schedules in the national territory. This campaign includes the immunization of 63,600 babies, with an investment of 13.8 million euros.

By province, the estimated doses for each one are Almeria, 7,435; Cadiz, 8,691; Córdoba, 5,417; Granada, 7,943; Huelva, 4,141; Jaén, 4,814; Malaga, 11,819, and Seville, 13,341.

This measure is added to the annual vaccination against influenza in the child population from 6 months to 5 years (59 months), which started in Andalusia during the 2022-2023 campaign, with the aim of protecting children as much as possible from the respiratory pathologies more frequent and that present a greater possibility of hospital admission. In the first year of administration of the childhood flu vaccine, more than 45% of the target population has been reached.

On the other hand, the General Directorate of Public Health and Pharmaceutical Regulation incorporated RSV surveillance into the Sentinel Surveillance Protocol for Acute Respiratory Infection in the 2021-2022 season, both in Primary and Hospital Care, thus joining the joint Covid19 surveillance strategy. /Flu that was established for the 2020-2021 season.

2023-12-08 11:39:54
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