The Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, participated today (12) in an act of childhood vaccination against covid-19 in Maceió (AL). During the act, the minister vaccinated two children and reiterated that, until the February 15ththe ministry will distribute enough vaccines to give the first dose to all children aged 5 to 11 years in the country.
On the occasion, the minister again defended the non-compulsory vaccination of children from 5 to 11 years old, but made an appeal for parents to take their children to be vaccinated. On Tuesday (8), Queiroga reported that 55 days after the approval of the first vaccine for use in children against covid-19 by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa), the percentage of children from 5 to 11 years old who took the first dose of immunization against the disease does not exceed 15%.
“We are going to make vaccines available to parents and I urge every parent to take their child to the vaccination room,” he said.
Queiroga also criticized the application of a second booster dose of vaccines against covid-19 and said that the country needs to move ahead with the application of the booster dose or third dose. The application of a fourth dose was raised by the government of São Paulo and for Rio de Janeiro’s city hall.
“Before wanting to apply the fourth dose without scientific evidence, we need to move forward with the application of the third dose of vaccine. Brazil has applied the booster dose to around 30% of its population, we do not want to apply a fourth dose without still having strong scientific evidence,” he explained.
A survey by the Ministry of Health points out that more than 54 million Brazilians able to take the booster dose have not yet done so. To date, 45.8 million people have received this additional dose.
Booster doses can be given four months after completion of the vaccine cycle. People should consult the municipal health departments to find out about the places where these doses are being applied. So far, the ministry recommends the application of a fourth dose only for people with a high degree of immunosuppression.
“In the last six months we have reduced more than 80% of deaths from covid-19 in our country. We are going to face this Ômicron variant and we are going to beat it, as we beat Delta, as we beat Gama and we are going to rid Brazil of the covid-19 pandemic so that we can be happy again, as we were before”, said the minister.
