Categories: Politics

Childhood vaccination plays an important role in collective protection, says infectious disease specialist

Childhood vaccination plays an important role in collective protection, says infectious disease specialist

The numbers of victims by Covid-19 daily are still “very expressive”, in the opinion of the infectologist and consulting member of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases, Alexandre Schwarzbold, in an interview with CNN Radio.

“This is probably due to the fact that a large part of the population has not even completed the vaccination schedule with the second dose of the vaccine. We see a lot of vulnerable people with incomplete schemes,” she said.

The infectious disease specialist highlighted that the immunization of children is the one that “has the greatest role at the moment for collective protection”: “This public is the one who is most susceptible to the virus and who represents an element of transmission.”

Schwarzbold highlighted that the vaccine “is not individual protection”: “It also helps to reduce transmission, not as significantly as the reduction of deaths and hospitalizations, but it helps to produce herd immunity.”

He recalled that there are studies that point out that in a family of 5 people, if 1 or 2 are vaccinated, the others are also protected. “Increasing vaccination is strategic and fundamental.”

For the specialist, the pandemic could become an endemic disease later this year. “It tends to happen, to have this endemic Kurdish, but that doesn’t mean controlling the virus, we should still focus on vaccinating the elderly and immunocompromised people, in this case.”

Source: CNN Brasil