Only 1 in 10 children aged 3 and 4 in Brazil received the first dose against Covid in three months of vaccination campaign. This indicates, according to official data tabulated by the Sheet, that 13.9% of children in this age group have already started the vaccination course. Complete vaccination (with two doses) is recorded in only 4.2% of children of this age in the country.
To get an idea of ​​what the rates mean, in the first three months of the vaccination campaign for the group from 5 to 11 years old in the country, at the beginning of the year, more than half of this population had already received the first dose against Covid. And it is worth remembering: the estimated population of 3-4 years old is much smaller (5.9 million) than the group of 5-11 years old (20.5 million).
The data were collected from DataSUS, from the Ministry of Health. We analyzed the records of the first and second doses of children aged 3 and 4 years from July this year, when immunization with Coronavac in this age group was approved by Anvisa and recommended by the government.
The numbers are quite different from those released by the Ministry of Health at the end of October. At the time, in response to delays in vaccination, the ministry said, in a note, that the rate of doses applied in this age group was around 40%.
Questioned by Sheet for almost two weeks after the tabulated data, the Ministry of Health reported that there was a mistake in the folder and that the 40% of vaccinated children mentioned in the note actually referred to the second dose of the 5 to 11 year old age group at the end October (today, around 49%). And that vaccine coverage against Covid in children aged 3 to 4 years is currently around 15% – with the first dose, in this case.
The folder did not inform, however, how it intends to respond to the low adherence of this age group to vaccination.
The numbers tabulated by Sheet also show that Paraná, Ceará and Pernambuco are among the states with the highest adherence to vaccines: they have at least 6.8% of children aged 3 and 4 years with the two doses – which, even in the national leadership, is a rate very low. Mato Grosso, Maranhão, Roraima and Acre do not reach 1% of this age group with complete immunization, according to official data from DataSUS.
There is, however, a spike in records of 3 and 4-year-old vaccinees against Covid in the country on D-Day of the National Vaccination Campaign against Poliomyelitis and Multivaccination, held on August 20, a Saturday — a sign that vaccination campaigns work, yes.
The action was aimed at immunization against polio, which is in decline in the country, but ended up encouraging adherence to other immunizers. It worked: the number of first doses against Covid in this age group, which had never exceeded 30,000 daily applications, reached almost 60,000 on D-Day.
As a result, August recorded about 380,000 first doses against Covid applied to the arms of 3 and 4-year-olds – more than double that of September, when there were 152,000 first doses for this age group.
“Vaccination is done with campaigns and planning. It’s no use having all the technology in the world if vaccines don’t reach the arms of those who need it”, says microbiologist Natalia Pasternak, who has been engaged, as a scientific promoter, in disseminating the importance of vaccines.
“It’s very easy to blame low adherence on families. But the truth is, if campaigns are done poorly, families either don’t know about it or think it’s not important enough.”
Dayane Machado, a researcher at Unicamp who investigates misinformation and vaccines, remembers that vaccine hesitancy is not anti-vaccination activism. “We need to understand what are the challenges faced by the public to develop measures compatible with the different realities of the country.”
The reasons for resistance to Covid vaccination by parents and guardians have been investigated by experts around the world. Work published in August in the journal “Vaccines” by scientists from New York and Florida showed that, in the US, parents’ resistance to the Covid immunization of their young children has several reasons.
In addition to concerns about possible side effects of long-term vaccination in young children, the rushed nature of immunization approvals and distrust of governments and pharmaceutical companies are among the reasons for low uptake. The study also showed that insecure parents were also more likely to believe that children were not susceptible to infection and that the vaccine did not work against new variants.
In Brazil, in an article published at the end of last year in the journal “Research, Society and Development”, scientists from Pernambuco carried out an extensive literature review to understand the main challenges that lead parents and guardians of young children to not comply with the vaccination schedule. . Among the findings are the fear of possible side effects and the option for “natural lifestyles”.
The authors point out, however, that vaccine stocks need to be stocked for vaccination to work – which has been a problem in the country.
Vaccination in the age group of 3 and 4 years was suspended due to lack of immunizations in some parts of the country. Case of the capital of Rio de Janeiro, which interrupted the immunization for lack of the first dose. The Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, however, denied delay in vaccinating children under 5 years of age against Covid in Brazil.
So far, Coronavac is the only vaccine available for that age. Approved in September by Anvisa for children over 6 months, pediatric Pfizer has not yet entered the immunization schedule for children under 5 years of age – and, recently, it was indicated by the Ministry of Health only for babies with comorbidities. The first doses were delivered to the government by the pharmaceutical company on the 27th.
THE Sheet extracted the vaccination information from Datasus on the 18th and analyzed the records of first and second doses against Covid of children aged 3 and 4 years. Then, an analysis was carried out based on the IBGE population estimate for the age group in 2022, which defines the goals of vaccination campaigns, with subsequent verification of the information with the Ministry of Health.
Tracking in Datasus data is possible because each immunized person is registered in the system with an individual code, to which information such as age and dose of vaccine received are linked.
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