In Mexico there are no Covid-19 vaccines for children – El Financiero

Due to the Covax mechanism, our country will not receive pediatric vaccines from Pfizer against Covid-19, therefore, what President López Obrador and López-Gatell asserted is another vile lie that threatens the health of children.

López-Gatell announced that there is the biological Abdala produced in Cuba and that this could be a good option, in addition to the Sinovac vaccine that has been successfully applied in other latitudes, however, he omits to say that these are not authorized by the World Organization of Health (WHO) to apply them to the child population.

The fallacy is twofold because the only vaccine authorized by the WHO for children is Pfizer’s, no other guarantees at the moment, creating the necessary immunity to protect the recipient, therefore, applying any other antigen is irresponsible.

On April 13, the president celebrated that after concluding the National Vaccination Plan against Covid 19 at the end of April, children will be vaccinated with the biologicals approved by the WHO through the UN Covax mechanism, however, Mexico is not a supported country, but self-financed and for that classification the vaccines from the Pfizer BioNTech laboratories are not being sent.

At a time when the pandemic has given the world population a break thanks to the massive application of the vaccine, including the child population with the exception of some countries, such as ours, it is belatedly announced that children will finally be vaccinated, although , if it is not possible by the Covax mechanism, then the question remains about when the desired antigen will be purchased.

Schools are now open after almost 2 years and mortality in general from the virus is declining to such a level that prevention measures such as the use of face masks have been relaxed.

It must be remembered that throughout the national territory, educational establishments were closed for 53 weeks. In Latin America, only Venezuela and Honduras had longer periods.

At this time, the cases of contagion are few, so the presidential announcement about vaccinating children must be taken with reservations, since if they did not do it when the contagion peaks were alarming, well now, it is not seen how they could do it , especially since public resources are committed to building white elephants like the Santa Lucia airport, now called Felipe Ángeles International Airport, which has nothing international and commercial flights, well, we will say, so as not to hurt feelings, that they are very scarce.

It has been preferred to allocate the budget to other social assistance programs that entail a political-electoral intention, instead of buying pediatric vaccines authorized by the WHO.

When breaking down the Expenditure Budget for this year, nowhere, under any item or item, is the corresponding to the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines for children observed.

It would be ideal if the labeled budget for the purchase of the biological for children and the number of vaccines to be purchased would be announced shortly, as well as the terms in which it will be applied to all children over 5 years of age.

Astrid Hollander, Head of Education for Unicef ​​in Mexico, has said that the pandemic has not stopped, it continues in Mexico and in the world and continues to affect the education sector. For this reason, she specified, “we must be prepared to face all possible scenarios and that children and adolescents continue their education in pandemic situations and other contingencies. We have to create an education sector that is resilient and for school closures to really be an exception.”

Let’s hope that there is not another rebound due to the new variants of the original strains and that these are not so malignant, for example, the Delta variant, since if it breaks out again, the most vulnerable population will be children.

IF there is no labeled budget and the Covax mechanism does not contemplate giving the Pfizer pediatric vaccine, then the only way would be a donation from the Joe Biden government, although as is the relationship with AMLO, it is also very difficult for this to be the way to get them.

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