This will be the device to vaccinate against the covid in the schools of Castellón

The Minister of Health, Ana Barceló, met this Thursday with the team of her department to design this process, which will start after on Monday the first 150,000 pediatric doses of the Pfizer vaccine will arrive in the Community. In total, the target population in the province of Castellón is around 42,000 children.

The goal would be to be able to give all of them at least one dose before Christmas, so The Public Health Commission agreed to space the time between the two punctures more, going from three to eight weeks. And it will not be until January when new vials are expected to arrive. Hence, the process may be delayed.

By age order

Specifically, immunization, after inoculating the doses to minors with a higher risk, will follow an order of age, as has been done with the general population, and those under 11, 10 and 9 years old will be vaccinated. Then it will descend until the vaccination is completed.

To carry out this vaccination process, Sanitat is going to send vaccination teams, made up of health professionals, to educational centers in the Valencian Community and to special education centers.

Likewise, regarding the risk group of immunosuppressed minors, vaccination will be carried out through the health services of the hospitals where they are treated.

The objective is to bring the coronavirus vaccine to the minor population, and avoid the displacement, both of parents and students, to health centers, so that the vaccination process is carried out in the most organized, agile and rapid way possible. For it, the health departments will contact the educational centers to establish a calendar with schedules and appointments.

Parental authorization

Vaccination will require the prior authorization of the minor’s fathers, mothers or legal guardians, so that only children who have such authorization will be immunized.

Finally, the educational centers will provide the most suitable spaces to host the mobile vaccination point, where health professionals will be installed to care for and vaccinate minors.

Outside of health centers

With this device, Sanitat supports the opinion of the Valencian Society of Pediatrics and certain experts who had insisted on removing this strategy from health centers due to the existing saturation. This is how they bet on the vaccination centers or the schools. The spokesman for the Valencian Society of Family and Community Medicine on vaccination, Dr. Germán Schwarz, already pointed out that immunization in schools was the one that would guarantee greater vaccination coverage due to the facilities for families, who must authorize the immunization of their children.

The Community has opted for this modality, like Extremadura or Castilla-La Mancha, while other autonomies have decided to reopen vaccines or inoculate children in health centers. Therefore, unlike what happened last summer when adolescents were vaccinated, this time Sanitat has taken into account the offer of Education to facilitate the centers, as already reported Mediterranean.

Incidence triggered in minors

And it is in this age group where the greatest circulation of the virus is being detected. The cumulative incidence is close to 600 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in this group, although most infections are asymptomatic or mild. This is causing, as this newspaper has already been reporting, an increase in positives in schools with the consequent confinements.

Last week, the province had more than fifty classrooms without face-to-face classes. There are striking cases such as Moncofa, where in his only school there are six classes confined by coronavirus.

Puig calls on parents to authorize immunization

The president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, launched yesterday an appeal to parents to protect their children under 12 years of age from the coronavirus by authorizing their vaccination, since the dose in this age group will not be mandatory either and will require the signed authorization of both parents.

The head of the Consell remarked that an attempt has been made to make the vaccination device for children between 5 and 11 years old as “as fast and efficient as possible” and cause the “least upsetting for parents.”

In this sense, Puig insisted on asking the parents for “complicity” to facilitate inoculation. In the same way, it has asked the educational community, which it has praised its responsibility, to act as up to now and has justified the increase in the incidence among classrooms precisely because children under 12 are not vaccinated against covid- 19.

Likewise, the socialist leader stressed that Almost 92% of the Valencian target population is already vaccinated and more than 400,000 people already have the booster dose. In the case of the province of Castelló, this percentage would be almost two points higher.

In that sense, Puig stressed that the risk of “getting infected and reaching a hospital is multiplied by 18 if you are not vaccinated.” “The vaccine is not 100% effective, but it is very high and hospital admissions and the severity of the disease change completely when you are vaccinated,” he stressed.

Castelló calls for the educational community to protect itself from the covid

Data from the Ministry of Health show that immunization among workers in educational centers is below average. As reported MediterraneanAt the end of November, vaccination coverage in this group reached 89.22%, despite the fact that, together with health, social-health and security and emergency personnel, it was one of those prioritized at the start of the vaccination campaign. In this sense, the Councilor for Education in Castelló, Francesc Mezquita, highlighted the role of teachers during the pandemic, while calling for the vaccination of those who have not yet done so “for personal protection and the rest of the community educational and out of solidarity with the most vulnerable people.

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