SP asks Anvisa to urgently vaccinate children from 5 years of age onwards

The governor of São Paulo, João Doria (PSDB), announced this Wednesday (3) an urgent request for Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) to release vaccination against Covid for children aged 5 years and over.

According to the governor, the request was made after a meeting with state health secretaries who are also in a hurry to extend the application of doses to this population.

“If we want to promote adequate control of the pandemic, we have to vaccinate the entire population,” said State Health Secretary Jean Gorinchteyn.

The Ministry of Health plans to vaccinate children only in 2022. For this audience, the forecast is 70 million doses.​

According to the director of the Butantan Institute, Dimas Covas, a meeting is scheduled with the federal government to present the safety of applying Coronavac in children.

Last week, the five directors of Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) were threatened with death if the approval of a vaccine against Covid-19 for children aged 5 to 11 occurs.

The threat was made via email on Thursday morning (28). She was not anonymous, but the agency is not sure if the name used is the real one.

Members of the board are Antonio Barra Torres (CEO), Meiruze Sousa Freitas (second board), Cristiane Rose Jourdan Gomes (third board), Rômison Rodrigues Mota (fourth board) and Alex Machado Campos (fifth board).

Meanwhile, the US authorized, on Tuesday (2), the use of the Pfizer vaccine in children aged between 5 and 11 years. President Joe Biden said the federal immunization program for this age group should not be 100% operational until next week.

The application was released after the director of the CDC (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention), Rochelle Walensky, approved the use of the immunizers in young children. She followed the recommendation given hours before, unanimously, by the council’s advisers, who also supported the use of Pfizer’s vaccine in this population group.

Counselors said the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of the vaccine. Most of the fears about the vaccine in question for younger people stem from rare and mild cases of inflammation in the heart.

Recently, Pfizer stated that its Covid vaccine is more than 90% effective in preventing symptomatic forms of the disease in children aged 5 to 11 years.