Israel extended the Covid-19 vaccination campaign to adolescents aged 12 to 16 on Sunday, June 6, despite a "
possible link
" between the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and mild cases of myocarditis detected in young men.
"
It is important for me to have my children vaccinated ... The sooner my children are vaccinated, the better it will be,
" Miriam Schwartz, 48, told AFP on Sunday, accompanying her teenagers aged 12 and 14 in a vaccination center in Jerusalem.
Read also: Covid-19: in Israel, thanks to vaccination, "life is back to normal"
For Ofek, a 15-year-old boy, who had come to receive his first dose, the vaccine was expected: “
I
was
waiting for this moment, to be able to be vaccinated, in order to travel outside Israel and see a part of my family that I did not. haven't seen it for two years.
"
"
Most of my friends don't really talk about the fear of 'corona' because we young people are less at risk than adults, but more because I can now travel without quarantine
" on return to Israel, says -he.
"The vaccine is effective and safe"
About 55% of the Israeli population has been vaccinated with both doses, thanks to a massive vaccination campaign launched in late December after an agreement with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
The latter delivered millions of doses to the country in exchange for data on the effects of vaccination in this country of 9.3 million inhabitants whose digitized medical databases allow rapid large-scale studies.
These confirmed the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Read also: Covid-19: in Israel, a cautious cultural recovery despite record vaccination
Health authorities had already started vaccinating adolescents likely to contract a severe form of the coronavirus and those whose families are at risk. But since last week, the authorities have extended the vaccination to all young people between the ages of 12 and 16 who want it.
"
The vaccine is effective and safe
" and the risks inherent in the virus are greater than those associated with vaccination, then said the ministry, after having mentioned "
a possible link
" between the Pfizer vaccine and cases of myocarditis in young people men. The European Medicines Agency (Ema) approved 10 days ago the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 12-15 year olds, which becomes the first vaccine to be authorized for adolescents in the 27 countries of the European Union.