(by Silvana Logozzo) - On November 29, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will decide on the authorization of Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid vaccine for children aged 5 to 11.
And closely, announced the president of Aifa Giorgio Palù, the Italian drug agency will adapt.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and the scientific societies of paediatrics have already had several meetings on communication strategies to inform families of the need to protect children and address the concerns and resistance of parents. And it was precisely the pediatricians who raised the alarm on the basis of the latest data from the Higher Institute of Health: between 5 and 11 years there is in fact an increase in the incidence of cases higher than in all other classes of age. Hospital and intensive care admissions are also on the rise. In just over two months (from 25 August to 9 November) there was an increase of 24,398 cases in children between 6 and 10 years of age.To these numbers must be added the 239 cases of MIS-C (child's multi-systemic inflammatory syndrome) surveyed by the Rheumatology Study Group of the SIP, a complication from Covid-19 which also affected children without previous pathologies, and the case reports of long Covid in the pediatric range.
The Italian Society of Pediatrics for its part has produced a poster (published on its website), sent to the 11,000 associated pediatricians who will post it in the clinics, with eight crucial questions to explain the importance of vaccination. This strategy has already been put into practice in Israel where the Pandemic Response Team (PRT) also held a public discussion on 4 November, with a question and answer session to address the fears of families and express further opinions on the anti vaccine. Covid for the little ones.
"It is not just a public health problem, children should not be vaccinated because they bring the virus into the house, but first of all to protect them from the disease. In the 12-19 year age group there has been an increase in cases but scarcely significant compared to that of the 5-11 age group and this is because vaccination coverage from 12 years old is satisfactory ", says Annamaria Staiano, president of the SIP," what we pediatricians must explain to parents is that the vaccine is the only weapon that we have against Covid, children must be protected because they too risk. This is the message that must pass ".
Meanwhile, in the United States, the administrations for this age group have already started on November 3, reaching one million inoculations in the first week. Israel has given the green light today and will begin vaccinating in the next few days.
In Italy, scientific societies have already moved in anticipation of Aifa's decision. The Sip has drawn up an official document on the vaccine in children between 5 and 11 years old, which was signed by the Association of Italian Pediatric Hospitals (Aopi) and to which the Federation of Free Choice Pediatricians (Fimp) also adheres. The document reports the data of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità from the beginning of the epidemic to November 9 relating to the 0-19 range: 791,453 cases, 8,451 hospitalizations, 249 admissions to intensive care, 36 deaths. Furthermore, last Friday in the press conference on weekly monitoring it was the president of the ISS Silvio Brusaferro himself who pointed out: "There is an increased circulation of the virus in the pediatric age group, especially under 12 years".
Regarding the possibility that even the children express their opinion on the vaccine, Staiano stresses that "one thing is a young person of 15, and another if it is a child between 5 and 11 years: at that age there is no it is the cognitive capacity to evaluate, there is no awareness, and the little ones depend entirely on the parents ".
The Bioethics Committee expressed itself on the subject, taken as a reference by a judge from Trieste who wrote in a case of conflict between parents over vaccination of their daughter: "the adolescent must be heard by medical personnel with pediatric skills and his will must prevail ".
But this is obviously not the case with children.
(HANDLE).
