Flu vaccination in schools doubles the coverage of the child population in Seville

“All flu infections start with children. ” Said the pediatrician and director of the Strategic Immunization Plan of Andalusia, David Moreno, this Wednesday in a meeting with journalists at the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs, together with the general director of Public Health and Medicines Management, Jorge del Diego, and he. also a member of the Andalusian Vaccination Advisory Committee, Daniel Ocaña, to provide some keys on the new strategies for vaccine access, among which is, and not by chance, how the expert has stressed put on, the vaccination of children between three and four years old in schoolswith intranasal vaccines, instead of the uncomfortable shoe, and which, according to the data, is completely successful.

According to statistics updated by the Ministry of Health, through the special vaccination portal Andavac, since the start of the vaccination, twice as many children under the age of 5 have been protected than in the entire campaign last year.

The numbers speak. In Seville, since the start of the campaign in this section of the population, on September 30, 32,738 children between 0 and 59 months have been vaccinated. Last year, the total coverage at the end of the campaign did not exceed 16,000 people vaccinated. At the Andalusian level, only the group of three and four years old, those included in the school vaccination, has reached a coverage of 61.8% (39,452 vaccinations given) in the first case and 58.7% (37,808) in the second, when, in the whole period of 2023, it barely reached 31% and 24%, respectively. As part of the strategy, teachers of children under five years of age are also being vaccinated this year.

The expert recalled that the population of children is the second risk group and that children up to 5 years old are admitted for the flu in the same proportion as those who older than 60 years. “The vaccine prevents 70% of children from getting the flu,” he said. In addition, it has had the effect that the youngest ‘ suffer the highest level of infection and are agents of transmission to their main caregivers: grandparents.

Therefore, Moreno has insisted that “more can be done”, in what he considers the “key period” of the vaccination campaign, before the first infections, which are expected which will go for the strain of influenza A, as undertaken by the Andalusian guidelines of the vaccination plan, as already seen in other parts of the world.

“We will see how the first risk groups have more desire to protect themselves and strengthen the campaign in those first days, but then it will decrease and we will see how vaccines fall. But we have three or four very intense weeks left to try to get the maximum number of people vaccinated at the beginning of the epidemic,” he said.

So, another one pata of the flu vaccination strategy is the implementation of measures such as walk-in vaccination, which will be available every Wednesday until the end of the campaign at 623 points enabled throughout Andalusia, of which 145 are in Seville. “We know it’s a tool that works because we’ve inherited it from the Covid vaccine and we’ve already seen how many more people were vaccinated on days without a prescription than on days with order,” he explained.

Regarding the rest of the risk groups, Moreno has emphasized, on the one hand, the “similar” coverage to last year in the largest users of residences and nursing homes, with 86.5% vaccinated; and, on the other hand, the decrease in the percentage of people with vaccination in the health sector, where only 28.2% of the total number of professionals have been vaccinated so far, very far from the 62 % vaccinated at the peak of the coronavirus. .

But not everything is the flu and experts have reminded that the vaccine against Covid-19 is “still important.” In fact, they have also emphasized the population of children who, far from the widespread perception that this virus affects them so much, account for a high percentage of admission to the hospital in children under one year of age. “The graphs show us that children under the age of one are very sensitive to Covid and also that they are hospitalized in percentages that are not insignificant,” said David Moreno, before recalling the importance of the vaccinate pregnant women to prevent these respiratory infections in the first. months of the child’s life.

For his part, Daniel Ocaña has been responsible for revealing the health risks involved in the flu or Covid-19 infections, beyond the usual fever or muscle aches and headaches. Therefore, he explained how the flu could increase the risk of stroke or pneumonia by eight people and the possibility of suffering a heart attack by ten people. Ocaña has also focused on the impact of Covid on the population “with a high hospitalization rate” despite a lower frequency. He therefore recalled the importance of vaccination because, although the coronavirus was ranked last year as the tenth cause of death in the world, instead of the fourth position in which it was in 2022, “there is a vaccine which stops him even more and he is there. It’s a shame he doesn’t get more than he does.”