The Municipal Health Department of Rio de Janeiro (SMS) suspended the previously announced schedule for vaccinating children aged 5 to 11 against covid-19. The reason is the delivery of doses in smaller quantities than expected. As a result, the schedule that provided for the application of the first dose to 10-year-old girls and boys starting tomorrow, remains with the repechage of 11-year-olds until Saturday (22).
“Due to the insufficient number of pediatric doses sent, the Municipal Health Department of Rio will maintain the recap for 11-year-olds in the coming days. Only with the arrival of new shipments will it be possible to advance the vaccination schedule for 10-year-old girls and boys”, the SMS reported.
The State Department of Health (SES) received from the Ministry of Health, yesterday morning (18), 93,500 doses of pediatric vaccine to distribute to 92 cities in Rio de Janeiro. However, SMS reported that the doses are not enough to continue the calendar. In the first two days of childhood vaccination, 25,733 doses were applied in the municipality.
THE Ministry expects to receive on Sunday (24) another 1.8 million doses of Pfizer, the only vaccine authorized so far by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) for application in children aged 5 to 11 years.
The municipality of Rio de Janeiro is experiencing rapid growth in contagion by the Ômicron variant of the new coronavirus. Until the moment, the city recorded in 2022 more than a quarter of the number of cases reported in the whole of last year. Of this year’s 76,466 cases, 3,656 were in children aged 0 to 9 and 5,519 in young people aged 10 to 19, according to city council panels.
Despite tomorrow (20) due to a municipal holiday in Rio de Janeiro, for the Day of Saint Sebastian, patron saint of the city, and the city hall has decreed an optional point on Friday, the municipal health centers, family clinics and testing centers will open on both days, from 8 am to 5 pm, “exclusively for actions to combat covid-19, care/testing and/or vaccination against the disease”, informed the SMS.
