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Worse thing is losing a child to a preventable disease, says pediatrician

Pediatrician and infectious disease specialist Renato Kfouri, director of the Brazilian Society of Immunizations (SBIm), said in an interview with CNN that no vaccine-preventable disease has claimed more victims than Covid-19.

“Only 0.4% of deaths from Covid-19 were in children under the age of 18. This can be distracting because, out of 600,000 deaths, it represents 2,500 children who lost their lives due to Covid”, he comments.

He says the vaccine has been shown to be highly safe in other countries and that side effects are few. “The disease is not negligible and the vaccine is safe. Children have the right to be vaccinated.”

“The worst thing is losing a child to a preventable disease. For us this is pain, imagine for the family?”, says Kfouri.

The first shipment of doses of Pfizer’s children’s vaccine against Covid-19 arrived in Brazil in the early hours of this Thursday (13).

In the batch, which arrived at Viracopos International Airport, in Campinas (SP), there were 1.2 million vaccines that will be destined for the Brazilian government for distribution to states and municipalities, following the population criterion.

With the distribution forecast from the Ministry of Health, the municipalities have already started to organize the vaccination schedule for children between 5 and 11 years of age.

Ômicron no Brazil

The infectologist points out that the abrupt increase in cases of Covid-19 in Brazil can overload the health system. Kfouri explained that the virus protection indicator is the transmission rate, not vaccination.

“The arrival of Ômicron was inevitable. What We Did at the Holidays [em termos de proteção] it wasn’t much different from what we were doing before. The big difference was the arrival of Ômicron, which brought a new wave”, he said.

Reference: CNN Brasil

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