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A boy is vaccinated against Covid-19 (archive image)
Photo: JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP
Slovakia wants to vaccinate children aged five to eleven against Covid-19 "this week", as ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Eliasova told the dpa news agency.
Although the vaccination for children of that age has not yet been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Health Minister Vladimir Lengvarsky had issued an exemption.
Eliasova pointed out, however, that vaccinations for this age group will only be allowed in special risk cases and upon written request from parents.
The exemption only applies to children who, in the event of a disease from Covid-19, face an extremely high risk of dying from it or of suffering particularly serious consequences.
The vaccinations are only allowed to take place in three specially equipped hospitals in the country.
Every single application must be checked individually and approved by a specialist.
In September, misleading reports in German-language media had given the impression that school children under the age of twelve were also systematically vaccinated against Covid-19 in Slovakia.
Eliasova, on the other hand, made it clear that there has not yet been a single vaccination in this age group in Slovakia.
In September, Cuba was the first country in the world to start letting children between the ages of two and eleven against Covid-19 nationwide.
The children receive the corona vaccines Abdala and Soberana 2, which were developed in Cuba. These have not yet been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as safe and effective vaccines.
In Germany, children can only be vaccinated against Corona from the age of twelve.
The vaccine manufacturer Biontech / Pfizer published data from a clinical study for a Covid-19 vaccine for children under the age of twelve at the end of September.
The vaccination was safe and well tolerated for the test persons between five and eleven years, it said in a message.
It also led to a robust immune response.
kha / dpa
