Soon there will also be a vaccination offer for children under 12 years of age.
But under what circumstances could vaccination be useful and what are the possible risks?
Kassel - There is not yet an exact schedule for when a vaccine against Corona * for children under 12 will be available on the market.
What is clear is that the parents' decision whether or not to have their children vaccinated will not be an easy one.
However, the number of corona infections in children is currently very high and should help with the decision.
Biontech and Moderna have been conducting studies with several thousand children between the ages of six months and eleven years for months.
If you believe the immunologist Carsten Watzl from the Leibniz Institute for Labor Research at the Technical University of Dortmund, Biontech at least wants to present its first results this month.
Corona vaccination for children under 12 years: Stiko vaccination recommendation is very unlikely
An application for approval could then be submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in October.
Admission can follow after just a few weeks.
When that happens, the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) will deal with the vaccine.
A general vaccination recommendation from Stiko for the age group is very unlikely.
This has been shown by the heated debates of the past few weeks.
Actor Til Schweiger also recently positioned himself in a trailer for a documentary against corona vaccinations * in children.
The recommendation of the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) a few weeks ago to have healthy 12 to 17-year-olds vaccinated against Corona * has given the vaccination campaign a new boost.
Corona vaccination offer for children under 12 years: Extra vaccine only for children?
There will also not be a vaccine specifically for children.
The active ingredient is only adapted to the smaller body size and the more efficient immune system of younger children.
Specifically, this means that different age groups receive different amounts of the active ingredient.
Nothing can currently be said about the possible side effects.
When the vaccine companies publish their study results, however, it will become a little clearer.
Even then, however, there will still be no absolute certainty about the risks, since the test group of around 3,000 children is very small.
The risk of very rare side effects * can therefore only be estimated with a certain degree of certainty when tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of children have received a vaccination.
Corona vaccination for children under 12 years of age: How dangerous is the virus for the little ones?
Whether children really need a vaccination against Corona is highly controversial.
According to an evaluation by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in children and adolescents up to 17 years of age, processes that have to be treated in hospital only occur in around one percent of cases and in infants in around two percent of cases.
However, an infection almost never ends fatally.
The few deaths of children and adolescents in connection with Corona always had serious previous illnesses.
But be careful: Just because a sick child did not have to go to the hospital does not completely rule out long-term consequences such as Long Covid. How often and how severely children are affected by long-term effects such as chronic exhaustion after illness has not been clarified. (Luisa Weckesser / dpa)
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