Covid vaccine affects only 11% of children up to 5 years old – 08/17/2023 – Health

The goal of vaccinating children against Covid remains far below expectations, even seven months after expanding the offer to the entire target audience.

According to data from the Observa Infância bulletin, produced by Icict (Institute of Communication and Scientific and Technological Information in Health), Fiocruz (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation), only 11.4% of children under five years old have the complete vaccination schedule (two doses of Coronavac for children aged 3 and 4 or three doses of pediatric Pfizer for babies aged six months to four years, 11 months and 29 days).

The rate represents just over 5.29 million doses applied. The estimated population in the country for 2023, in this age group, is 13,122,252 children.

Considering the differences between age groups, the disparity is even greater in babies aged 6 months to 2 years, with only 2.9% of them having a complete regimen (three doses), against 21.7% in children aged 3 and 4 years.

In relation to the total doses applied in this age group, vaccination with the complete schedule represents less than a third (28.1%) of the doses applied. The percentage of first doses applied is about three times higher.

The numbers draw attention, especially considering that Covid has a high risk in this age group. According to Cristiano Boccolini, an Icict researcher and coordinator of Observa Infância, the low vaccination coverage in children up to five years old is a reflection of multiple factors.

“There is a strengthening of the anti-vaccination movement, which has gained space and voice, including a former president who led the movement and a Minister of Health who placed several restrictions on vaccination, a false sense of security for parents that children would be less affected by Covid and the fear of side effects. All of this undermines vaccination.”

More recent data from the Ministry of Health, as of this month, indicate that, between January 1 and July 11, 2023, 80 children aged up to four years died in the country as a result of Covid. Of this total, there were 23 between the first and fourth year of age, which represents an average of approximately one death per week in this age group.

“Although Covid is no longer a health emergency, we are still experiencing a pandemic, so cases and hospitalizations and deaths continue to appear, including children. susceptible to serious forms”, explains the researcher.

Hospitalizations for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in children up to five years old continue to rise in several regions of the country.

Data from the InfoGripe Bulletin, also produced by Fiocruz, released on the 3rd of August, indicate a trend towards an increase in Srag due to Covid in children up to four years old, while in the other age groups there is a stabilization in new cases and hospitalizations due to Covid.

“It was reported that children did not die or catch Covid, but that is not true. What unfortunately we observed is that in the first two years of the pandemic, about two children under the age of five died per day from Covid”, he says.

SARS hospitalizations can be for different causes, including respiratory infections such as influenza and Covid. Vaccination also against other vaccine-preventable diseases, such as polio, measles and DTP, also continues to fall in the country.

“This false sense of security led the population to believe that, in general, vaccine-preventable diseases are no longer a problem, and this is sad because they continue to cause hospitalizations and deaths”, says the coordinator of Observa Infância and researcher at Uniphase Patricia Boccolini.

“Unfortunately, when there is a death of a child from meningitis, there is commotion and mobilization due to the vaccination campaign, but the death of a child from Covid goes unnoticed even in the press.”

According to the Health folder, all vaccines in the children’s calendar had the lowest vaccination coverage in 2022, with the majority not even reaching 70%. The inclusion of the Covid vaccine in the children’s calendar is also a call from experts and doctors to help raise awareness of the importance of immunization against the coronavirus.

According to Ethel Maciel, secretary of Health and Environment Surveillance in the portfolio during the Lula (PT) administration, the previous government did not reserve enough stock of pediatric doses to vaccinate the entire child population.

Vaccination in children aged 5 to 11 years also showed a slowdown in the last year, with only 4 out of 10 children in this age group having completed the vaccination schedule.