Vaccinating children against Covid is safe and necessary, experts say

Authorizing Pfizer’s vaccine for children aged five and over will be an important tool against the Covid-19 pandemic, experts say. Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) allowed the use of the immunizing agent this Thursday (16).

Although minors usually do not have severe cases of the disease, they can be an important vector of virus transmission, as they do not yet have vaccination coverage, says Marcos Boulos, professor of infectology at the Faculty of Medicine at USP (University of São Paulo).

“Even if children do not have serious infections, they continue to spread the virus. So, vaccination is important,” says Boulos.

The professor explains that it is necessary to have at least 80% of the population vaccinated to stop the virus from circulating. “The more people vaccinated, whether adults or children, this affects the immunity of the population.”

Concern about the transmissibility of the coronavirus increases with the emergence of variants, such as omicron. “It is necessary [a vacinação] because the new variants are spreading with greater intensity in unvaccinated populations, including children”, says Renato Grinbaum, member of the SBI (Brazilian Society of Infectology).

Grinbaum also points out that, since the identification of the first variant, the coronavirus has developed more and more severe cases in the infected cases, therefore, the proportion of sick children has grown in relation to the scenario seen with the original strain of the virus.

In addition, because they are not yet vaccinated, children are more susceptible to being infected compared to groups of other age groups who have already taken the immunizers.

Pfizer’s product has already been recommended for children by other international agencies, such as the FDA (the American agency that regulates drugs and food products in the country), the European Agency and the Canadian Agency. In the United States, authorization took place in November.

Jamal Suleiman, an infectious disease specialist at Hospital Emílio Ribas, says that the immunizing agent for this age group is safe and necessary. “It is an extremely safe vaccine, with the occurrence of adverse events of only 0.05% [em crianças a partir de cinco anos]”, it says.

Other initiatives to expand immunizations for children and adolescents have been carried out in recent months. The Butantã Institute, for example, sent a first request for authorization from CoronaVac to people aged 3 to 17 in July, but it was denied because of the limitation of data in the studies presented at that time.

Now, a second request has been sent with new studies for the agency to evaluate within a maximum period of 30 days.

“It is important that we have more than one vaccine [para crianças]. The inactivated vaccines platform [utilizada na CoronaVac] it is well known in pediatrics, but it is necessary to see the quality of the studies that were presented to Anvisa”, says Renato Kfouri, president of the immunization department at the SBP (Brazilian Society of Pediatrics).

Even though it is important to apply the vaccine to younger people, Boulos says that it should still be a priority to look for those from risk groups who have not yet been vaccinated or who have taken only one dose.

“I think you have to try anyway to get people [não vacinadas] to improve the immunity of the population”, he says.

The application of the vaccine in children, however, will not start immediately because the doses for the age group are specific and are not yet in Brazil.

The forecast is to immunize 70 million children.