SP says it can vaccinate all children from 3 to 11 years old in 10 days

The government of São Paulo estimates that it has the capacity to vaccinate all children aged 3 to 11 in the state against Covid-19 in about ten days.

The information was given by the person responsible for the State Immunization Program, Regiane de Paula, at a meeting of the secretariat with Governor João Doria (PSDB) this Monday (10).

This public can be served by Coronavac, the immunizer of Chinese origin that is produced at the Butantan Institute, which has 12 million of the 15 million separate doses available for pediatric use in the state.

Also this morning, the director of the entity, Dimas Covas, met virtually with representatives of the laboratory that created the vaccine, Sinovac, and experts from the Chilean government and the Catholic University of the Andean country, which has already immunized 1.4 million people. between 3 and 17 years.

Data on the safety and efficacy of Coronavac in this population segment were passed on, according to Covas, very good. The data will be sent to the panel of doctors who will be consulted by Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency), which analyzes the Butantan request to release Coronavac from 3 to 11 years.

Today, the agency only authorizes use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for ages 5 to 11. The Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government did its best to delay the start of immunization of this group, creating an unprecedented public consultation in the Ministry of Health on the subject.

The president himself attacks the vaccination of children whenever he can, raising doubts about its necessity. Just over 300 children in this age group have officially died in the pandemic, and the emergence of the highly transmissible variant omicron has put the debate on vaccinating the group in the spotlight.

After all, classes are about to resume, and even if it causes less severe symptoms, the omicron has a high potential to spread even further, overwhelming the healthcare system. In some countries, 90% of those hospitalized are people without any vaccinations – in the case of children.

Anvisa should receive the new data from Butantan this afternoon.

In the São Paulo government, there is an expectation that the agency will be quick to release it, even because of the state of relations between it and the federal government. The agency’s president, Admiral Antonio Barra Torres, issued a harsh note over the weekend asking the president to either prove his insinuations that Anvisa would have “interests” in releasing the vaccine for children, or to recant.

The Ministry of Health has already ordered supplementary doses from Pfizer for this month, and says it will ask Anvisa to release vaccination from 0 to 4 years with the American-European vaccine. The advantage of Coronavac is the availability of doses, due to the fact that the immunizer has stopped being used by the federal government.

First vaccine against Covid-19 applied in Brazil, at Doria’s insistence in the face of the reluctance of his opponent Bolsonaro, Coronavac ended up being replaced mainly by Pfizer. The topic of vaccination is one of the topics that should punctuate the campaign of the toucan to the Planalto this year.

Pediatric use could give new life to the drug, which according to Chilean and Chinese data is better tolerated and provides a good immune response in children.

If released, as the São Paulo government hopes, it will also keep Coronavac on the production line of the multivaccine factory that is being raised with money from private donations at Butantan, around R$200 million.

Scheduled to run last year, it’s late. The physical structure, said Covas, should be ready in the next few days. Since November, imported equipment for the manufacture of immunizers, not just Covid-19, is being assembled. The director believes that the plant will be delivered to be qualified for operation in April.