The municipal secretary of Education of Rio de Janeiro, Renan Ferreirinha, stated that he already has a plan to apply a vaccine against Covid-19 to children in public schools in the capital. However, according to him, there is still no concrete forecast of when the Federal Government will buy Pfizer vaccines with a lower dosage, as authorized by Anvisa.
“It would be very important if the children were vaccinated already during the vacation period. But we have a vaccination plan in hub schools in all our regions in partnership with Health, we have the capacity to operationalize this as soon as we have the vaccine, which should be the Federal Government’s number one priority at the moment”, explained the secretary.
The dosage of the vaccine for this age group will be adjusted and lower (1/3) than that used by people over 12 years old. According to Anvisa, the proposal is to have different bottles, with specific dosage for each group. The bottles will be differentiated by color, purple for adults and teenagers and orange for children, according to Pfizer. The vaccination of children aged 5 to 11 years with the immunizing agent from Pfizer was authorized by Anvisa on Thursday (16).
The plan of the Municipal Department of Education, in partnership with the Ministry of Health, is to immunize 300,000 students aged between 5 and 11 years. There will be two schools per region, which adds up to 22 teaching units applying the immunizing agent against Covid-19.
In 2021, with the return of face-to-face classes, Rio’s municipal schools adopted a 10-day closure protocol whenever a case of Covid was identified among students or faculty.
*Under supervision of Adriana Freitas
Reference: CNN Brasil
