Currently the vaccine against Covid-19 Pfizer-BioNTech It is the only one authorized in Mexico to apply to children from 5 to 11 years of age.
This, after in March, the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) approved its emergency use of said vaccine, clarifying that for this new age group only one dose will be handled and its composition will be different from the biological one approved for those over 12 years of age.
Although it has not yet been announced when its application would begin, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has commented that once the National Vaccination Plan ends (April 30) against Covid-19, could start the application to boys and girls with biologicals approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). This batch of vaccines comes from the UN Covax mechanism, which is already paid for by the country.
For his part, the Undersecretary for Prevention and Health Promotion, Hugo López-Gatell, has recently declared that for the vaccination of children between the ages of 5 and 11 against Covid-19, various ways are already being analyzed to acquire the immunizer and among the doses that are studied are Abdala (from Cuba), Sinovac (from China) and Pfizer, so they hope to supply the vaccines by the second quarter of this year.
To date, the only entities in the country that already have a vaccination plan for children between 5 and 15 years of age are Nuevo León and Coahuila, who through cross-border trips to USA have managed to advance with this sector of the population.
According to local information, in Coahuila they have managed to immunize 38,000 children within the framework of these caravans.
associations come together
Through a letter, the Mexican Association of Pediatrics, the National Confederation of Pediatrics of Mexico, the Mexican Academy of Pediatrics, the Mexican Association of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, the Mexican Association of Vaccinology and the Mexican Transplant Society have urged the federal government to start immunizing children between the ages of 5 and 11 as soon as possible, stating that the coronavirus is already the leading cause of infant death in the country.
They point out that according to information from the Ministry of Health, there have been 93,825 cases confirmed by Covid-19 in minors and is the main cause of infant mortality in Mexico with 884 deaths from the start of the pandemic to February 13, 2022, despite being a vaccine-preventable disease.
Finally, they state that among the benefits of vaccinating minors are:
- Fewer cases of infection.
- Lower risk of contagion.
- Decreased risk of new potentially higher risk variants appearing in the short term.
- The fact that vaccinated people, including minors, present serious illness and death due to the disease.
- A safer return to school.
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