Pediatric vaccination against coronavirus is safe, collaborates with the decrease in the circulation of the virus, lowers the risk of contracting the disease and developing serious symptoms that lead to hospitalization and avoids post-Covid sequelae such as those of multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS), Therefore, specialists and health authorities consider it to be a key tool for the start of the school year.
The approval by the National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Technology (Anmat) of the vaccine from the Pfizer-BioNTech laboratory and the acquisition of 5 million doses of its pediatric version by the National Government announced this week, will collaborate with the immunization campaign for boys and girls that has been carried out since October.
Pfizer’s immunizer will be added to Sinopharm’s, which has been used up to now for the pediatric population.
According to official figures, 77.4 percent of the population between 3 and 17 years of age have at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, while 46 percent of them up to 11 years of age completed the inoculation scheme and 67.1 between 12 and 17.
In this scenario, specialists and officials defended pediatric vaccination arguing five fundamental axes: vaccines are safe; they avoid the possibility of contracting the disease and, in doing so, significantly reduce the chance of serious symptoms being generated that lead to hospitalization or death; they reduce the circulation of the virus in the general population and that of developing multisystem inflammatory syndrome and are key to guaranteeing a face-to-face school year.
Regarding Sinopharm, Rosa Bologna, head of the Garrahan Hospital Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases service, pointed out that “it is safe” and that “it is a vaccine that has already been applied in millions of doses in our country and at a global level. world”.
In children, it was applied in China, the United Arab Emirates and El Salvador, the specialist assured and said that “the phase 3 research studies that are being done in those countries showed that it is safe and produces good antibodies or defenses against Covid.”
Meanwhile, after the recent approval of a pediatric version of the Pfizer vaccine, the head of the Department of Medicine at the Ricardo Gutiérrez Hospital and government adviser, Eduardo López, explained to Télam that “30 micrograms are applied to adults and boys 10” and highlighted that there are “published works” that show “an efficacy of 90% to prevent the disease”.
“It is a vaccine whose adverse effects are very few, very rare and with a very good evolution,” he said, and stressed that “we have one more tool to use in pediatrics.”
Regarding the circulation of the virus, pediatrician Nora Schenone assured that “it is essential” to stop it “and the virus circulates among the unvaccinated. Although there is also circulation in the vaccinated, it is much less. This has happened with measles, polio , the flu, which in the long run will end up vaccinating the whole world”.
In the same vein, doctor Lourdes Arruvito, a researcher at the Institute for Biomedical Research on Retroviruses and AIDS (Inbirs), indicated that “children are a population that is very defenseless against the virus and as progress is made with vaccination in the rest of the population become the target of the virus.
This was what happened with the extension of the Delta variant in the United States and the United Kingdom, where cases and hospitalizations of children under 12 years of age skyrocketed because the vaccine for them was not approved at that time.
The head of the Epidemiology Service at Hospital Gutiérrez, Ángela Gentile, considered, for her part, that “vaccination in boys is key, firstly because the risk is not zero as we already know perfectly well, especially when they have comorbidities, but even in healthy immunocompetent boys there are clinical pictures of risk, multisystem inflammatory syndrome”.
In this sense, Arruvito explained that “in children without comorbidities there is also a benefit” in vaccination since “although it is true that the majority pass through the infection asymptomatically or with mild symptoms, even in these cases sequelae can remain” .
Likewise, he pointed out that the complete vaccination schedule “is a way to prevent post-Covid multisystem inflammatory syndrome, an exacerbated inflammatory response that occurs in girls and boys without underlying diseases 8 to 10 weeks after having the infection and that by usually generates need for intensive care “.
On January 7, the president of the Argentine Society of Pediatrics (SAP), Pablo Moreno, stated that “to the extent that groups of adults are being vaccinated, children are being more affected” and added that “although in the The vast majority are mild cases and those hospitalized there are children with pre-existing diseases, we must not forget that the risk always exists.
“In addition to the effects that we are looking for in children that were mentioned before, vaccination contributes to herd immunity and prevents intra-household transmission, especially in the elderly and in immunocompromised people who develop a lower response to the vaccine” Bologna maintained.
For her part, Gabriela Cerruti, spokesperson for the national government, affirmed yesterday that the Executive’s priority “is that children and young people of school age have the complete scheme for when classes start” so that “this allows for a fruitful school year “.
With this objective, the Government made a series of tools available to the jurisdictions to facilitate the return to classrooms scheduled for March 2 in most provinces.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, held meetings in recent days with members of the SAP to analyze the vaccination strategy against the coronavirus for children and adolescents before the start of classes.
Those attending the meeting agreed to address a specific approach by province during January and February to arrive with the “best coverage at the beginning of the school year” with all the vaccines included in the official calendar.
“Argentina has a stock of vaccines that can be co-administered,” said Vizzotti, adding that it must “advance before the start of school with all the controls of the boys and girls, and the updating of the calendar vaccines, in addition to the vaccine against Covid-19, depending on the age you have to start and complete the vaccination schedules”.++
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