It was not expected before 2022, but things have gone so fast that 3.2 million children from 5 to 11 years old could be starting to vaccinate against the Covid this autumn.
Is it the same as in adults?
What dose will you give?
Will those who have happened too?
Can it overlap with others?
First of all, the regulatory agencies should be pronounced: from the Ministry of Health insist that in this matter, as in all, they will go hand in hand with the European Agency of the Medicine (EMA), whose pronouncement on the pediatric vaccine “can
May it occur shortly, “said this week, the person in charge of the department, Carolina Darias.
At the moment Andalucía has already put a date at the beginning of the Pediatric Vaccination campaign against Covid: After initially calculating the end of October, he has postponed his estimate at the beginning of November, when he is confident that the EMA responds to the authorization that on Friday
He has asked for Pfizer – a week ago asked the US Food and Drug Administration. (FDA) – to use your drug in children from 5 to 11 years old.
As a backdrop, the debate about whether it is ethical vaccinating children when most of the planet has not yet received a first dose and, above all, if the benefits of vaccining them against a disease that accuse mildly or asymptomica in the immense
Most cases surpass the risks.
The results of the Pfizer vaccine trials in children under 12 have not been able to be more encouraging: the adverse effects that have been seen in children are the same as in adults–olose at the injection site, discomfort, fever.
..-, or “even more slight and less frequent”, and also immunogenicity – that is, the ability to generate antibodies – is similar.
This is explained to EFE Manuel Gijón, one of the researchers at the Hospital twelve October that participates in the simultaneous essay that the company launched in May in 100 centers of Spain, Poland, Finland and the United States in almost 600 children of six months
At 12 years to test your vaccine.
Despite the good results communicated by the pharmacist, the question is now to know if the regulatory agencies will recommend it because the benefit that the risk is greater.
“It’s the million dollar question,” says the pediatrician.
“If with the vaccination of children or part of them, we managed to give them some protection and that they return to the normality they had before, it is a gigantic benefit that we can offer them, and I think that the balance of the benefit about the risk can be decayed
In favor of the benefit, “he argues.
Individual benefit can be practically non-existent, but Manuel Franco, epidemiologist and professor at the University of Alcalá de Madrid and Johns Hopkins University, puts the accent on the need to avoid by all means that its educational process looks interrupted or traded
How has the last two years have happened?
Without forgetting that children are necessary to achieve the desired group protection, since the more than 5 million under 12 years of age represent 11 percent of the population.
“Now it’s time to protect the little ones and we want them to contribute to that goal,” adds the vowel of the Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration (SESPAS).
The Spanish Association of Pediatrics will support the vaccination of minors if it is decided because they are always “in favor of any preventive method, more if it is a vaccine, the spokesman for his vaccine committee (CAV-AEP), Francisco
Álvarez.
“That the disease is mild in children? Yes, but the data of the Carlos III Health Institute tell us that since June of last year, 16 children under 10 years of age and 176 have entered the UCI,” he argues.
In addition to the weight of the pandemic, it believes that it must be borne in mind that the virus “only circulates where they leave, and where they leave it is among those who are not vaccinated,” which are now under 12 years old and a part of the stretch
20-40 years, where 80% have not been reached that they have already exceeded the rest of the Etarian groups.
A lot was talked at the beginning of crossed immunity that exposure to other viruses could generate the smallest ones to protect themselves from SARS-COV-2 but, Matiza Álvarez, it is only “of a theory, and theories there are many – also the contrary-
that you have to check. ”
Others prefer to wait to issue an opinion: the Spanish Association of Vaccunology (AEV), one of those who have advised the Ministry in the preparation of the Strategy, considers that it is not yet the time to talk about a pediatric vaccine.
“It is a debate that can not be considered because until the essays that allow that indication we can not do anything,” says Efe his president, Amos García Rojas.
And, from arriving, “The recommendation to vaccinate children will depend a lot on the weight that the pandemic has at that moment,” he adds.
If it comes true, how will the COVID vaccine from children be?
As well as in adults: two punctures separated by 21 days, with the difference of the dose, which is between three and ten times lower – depending on age and the weight – that that of the elderly, which is 30 micrograms.
For the rest, the same protocol would be maintained, says Álvarez, also for those who have passed the disease, which would only receive an injection.
“They could coincide without problem,” guarantees the pediatrician, which explains that if it was finally optualized by separating them, it is “simply so that the side effects are not added and distinguished well.”
It can also be combined with the flu, as they want to do many communities with those over 70 to which they are going to be given an additional dose.
The Vaccine Advisory Committee of the AEP has recently asked for universal child anti-clipping vaccination in children between 6 and 59 months.
“Each community will have to organize and decide whether it will be in the usual vaccunódromes, in health centers, in schools … it will depend on them to decide what they have to do, but all the possibilities are going to be good.”
The CAV-AEP coordinator dares to vaticinate the success of the pediatric campaign against the Covid: “At these ages we have wonderful coverage with the vaccines of the normal calendar, so it is to assume that we are going to have the same success.”
