The Minister of Health of the Nation, Carla Vizzettiheaded this Thursday the opening of the campaign against coronavirus for boys and girls from 6 months to 3 years in the Garrahan Hospitalwhere he pointed out that pediatric vaccination is “a very big novelty, Argentina is one of the first countries to be able to protect this age group”, and urged to take advantage of the visit to the vaccination center to “give other vaccines on the calendar, since they can be co-administer”.
“It is a vaccine that is recommended from six months to five yearsso it will be very important to start the vaccination schedules for all babies and babies who have not yet started it and to receive the booster or start the schedule for those who had not started it between three and four years,” Vizzotti said.
In this center, mothers of girls and boys awaited the call for their children to start the early childhood inoculation scheme that will be carried out with two doses with a period of 28 days between one and the other, together with children under three and four years old. that they received the complete scheme from Sinopharm and that they will now be able to receive the reinforcement from Moderna.
“The recommendation in vaccinations is take advantage of giving other vaccines on the calendar“, since “they can be co-administered, they can be given at the same time, and taken advantage of if a dose is missed. So with a very big novelty, Argentina is one of the first countries to be able to protect this age group,” Vizzotti said.
Likewise, the minister pointed out that as vaccination progresses, “each jurisdiction, and as always depending on the Provincial Plan, will define how it will vaccinate”, either “in turn or with spontaneous demand”.
Regarding the evolution of the pandemic, the minister maintained that “the virus will not go awaytherefore this is what is going to happen to us, especially in countries that have seasonality like Argentina in the winter”.
And he added that “just as there are other respiratory viruses, we are going to have SARS-CoV-2, that is why it is a message It is very important that the population continues to receive the reinforcements as we get vaccinated against the flu every year.“.
In Garrahan, vaccination against the coronavirus began with Matías, 11 months old, who left the vaccination box with a smile and greeting the hospital doctors who were present.
Then, other girls and boys would be added who, patiently attended by the center’s professionals, quickly received the inoculation, which “is similar to the other applications of the calendar, at the moment we try to distract them to counteract a little the fear that they may have,” Nora Mamani, supervisor in charge of the vaccination area, told Télam.
For her part, Adriana Parra, an infectious disease specialist at the hospital, maintained that “There are no obstacles to getting vaccinated or any contraindication”and commented that if the child has a cold without fever “it is recommended that they come anyway, they do not have to lose the opportunity to be vaccinated”,
In addition, he explained that the application sites “usually can hurt, but it is not necessary to put them cold or massage them, it will go down,” and in turn, if there is a fever after receiving the vaccine, ” they have to receive some antipyretic that the pediatrician prescribes”.
For her part, the head of the hospital’s Epidemiology and Infectology Service, Rosa Bologna, pointed out that “what we have seen in the analysis of the Covid cases that we had this year, which are about 2,000 that we treated here at the hospital, was that being under three years old was a risk factor for hospitalization similar to having an underlying disease,” he said.
As for those over three years of age, the specialist stressed that it was shown that “in children who had two or more doses of vaccines, it is a protective factor”, which showed that “we have enough data to see that vaccines that have been incorporated are safe, effective and that they come to cover an age group that is vulnerable and has a higher risk of complications”.
For this reason, the infectologist stressed that “the incorporation of the vaccine in this age group from six months to three years is really very important news.”
The Ministry of Health ordered this Monday the distribution of the first 645,600 doses of the vaccine that, according to what was agreed at the last meeting of the Federal Health Council (Cofesa), will be used to start the inoculation scheme for girls and boys between the 6 months and 2 years 11 months and 29 days and give the booster for the population of 3 and 4 years.
