The delay in the release and purchase of childhood vaccines against Covid-19 should mean that a good number of children between five and 11 years old will be without immunization for the return of the 2022 school year. Even the application of only one dose for the return to classes is not enough to prevent transmission and contamination.
The alert comes from the pediatrician and member of the pediatrics department of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases Marcelo Otsuka, who spoke to CNN this Sunday (9).
“One dose will not be enough. Having both is not enough to reset the transmission either, but it certainly reduces it a lot,” said Otsuka.
The specialist alerts to the potential of transmission of children in the classroom, enhanced by the reproduction capacity of the Ômicron variant. “Whoever is vaccinated and gets Ômicron has a chance of transmitting it to three other people,” he said.
He also highlighted that children who do not even take the first dose have a much greater potential for transmission. “Those who are not vaccinated must generate something between one in 12 or 15, he points out”.
Vaccination will depend more on the government’s ability to make vaccines available than on the states and municipalities to distribute immunization agents to the population because, according to Otsuka, the operational efficiency for application is not exactly a problem, at least for the most populous states.
“Many states have the structure to quickly carry out vaccination. In some places there is greater difficulty, but the big problem is not structure, but having the vaccine”, he said.
Reference: CNN Brasil
