The head of the Epidemiological Control and Infectology Service of the Garrahan Pediatric Hospital, María Rosa Bologna, reported this Thursday that of hospitalized children “only 30 percent have the complete vaccination schedule”, while he pointed out that this week “hospitalizations continued to increase.”
“This week hospitalizations continued to increase. Currently we have 63 girls and boys hospitalized with confirmed covid-19 and another 18 suspected cases awaiting confirmation,” Bologna detailed.
The doctor warned that “only 30 percent have the complete vaccination schedule.”
On Tuesday of last week, the Garrahan pediatrician Oscar Trotta had reported, through his Twitter account, that the health center had to reopen a third hospitalization room for patients with covid-19.
“Once again we are opening a third hospitalization room for Covid patients at the @HospGarrahan, We went from 15 boarding schools on December 20 to 55 minors hospitalized today (January 4),” Trotta said on the social network.
Then the doctor explained that “on December 20 we had an inpatient room, on the 27th we opened another and today (Tuesday, January 4) another, with a capacity of between 8 and 10 beds.”
At that moment, 60 percent were not vaccinated or had an incomplete schedule: “Some are under 3 years old (population in which the vaccine was not authorized), others have complex diseases and vaccination is not recommended because it compromises their immune system and the rest is because the parents decided so,” he said.
Strengthen pediatric vaccination
In this context of increasing cases, and also facing the start of the school year, next Wednesday the ministries of Health and Education will meet with the Argentine Society of Pediatrics (SAP), Unicef, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and other organizations to encourage vaccination against covid-19 and other pathologies in children and adolescents during the summer.
The Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, explained that “currently 67 percent of girls and boys from 3 to 11 years old started their vaccination scheme against covid-19 in Argentina and 45 percent completed it; That is very good considering that we started in October and what we see is that it continues to increase, it has not stagnated at any point.
However, one of the objectives of this meeting is to further “promote” this vaccination “so that the majority begin the school year with the complete scheme for individual benefit and collective impact.”
In October 2021, Argentina approved the Chinese vaccine for Sinopharm against coronavirus for the population between 3 and 11 years; It is a vaccine that uses inactivated virus, which is a safe technology that is used in other vaccines such as hepatitis A, inactivated polio or Salk, and influenza.
– .
