A report from the National Commission for Vaccine Safety (CoNaSeVa) pointed out that the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine applied to boys and girls registered only 1.2 events supposedly attributable to serious vaccination or immunization (Esavi), every 100,000 people vaccinated. An almost identical number of severe cases registered for those who were immunized with the North American Pfizer dose (1.1), while in the case of the Moderna vaccine, the record of serious Esavi rises to 2.7 every 100 thousand. In this sense, according to the biologist and researcher of Conicet Rodrigo Quiroga, these percentages confirm that “pediatric vaccination is very safe”, by registering similar rates of severe adverse events with respect to the use of aspirin, paracetamol and ibuprofen.
The “Special Report on Vaccine Safety Surveillance in Children and Adolescents” reports the data collected, until the end of October, from the extension of the vaccination campaign to adolescents (July 28, 2021) and in children (October 12, 2021). The document explains that Esavi are events that are temporarily related to vaccination, pBut they are not necessarily caused by it, so they are called “supposedly attributable to vaccination” and it specifies that they are registered of two types: “global” and “serious”.
What were the most frequent reactions reported? The CoNaSeVa study indicated that for the Pfizer vaccine it was “fever, headache, myalgia and local reaction”; for Moderna dose “local reaction and flu-like syndrome”. Meanwhile, for Sinopharm they were “allergy, mild and moderate characteristics, affecting mainly the skin; and, secondly, local reactions were reported at the application site”.
The information obtained among the population already vaccinated in Argentina yielded the following global results:
- In adolescents (12 to 17 years) 2,796,720 doses were applied and 484 Esavi were registered (rate = 17.3 / 100,000 doses applied).
- In boys and girls (3 to 11 years), 1,932,165 doses and 153 Esavi were registered (rate = 7.9 / 100,000 doses applied).
These data are then discriminated according to the three vaccines applied to the population of minors, up to 3 years of age. According to the CoNaSeVa report, the Esavi registered – every 100,000 doses – were the following:
- Sinopharm (1,932,165 153 doses applied): 7.9 Esavi “global” and 1.2 “severe”
- Modern (1,055,244 326 doses applied): Esavi 30.9 “global” and 2.7 “serious”
- Pfizer (1,741,476 doses applied): 9.1 “global” Esavi and 1.1 “severe”
“Pediatric vaccination is very safe”
After the disclosure of the CoNaSeVa report, the biochemist and researcher Conicet, Rodrigo Quiroga, highlighted that the report confirms that “pediatric vaccination is very safe” and estimated that with an adverse event rate of 1.2 per 100,000 vaccines, “60 cases in total would be expected throughout the country if we vaccinated the 6 million children 3-11 years old.” “While we could avoid thousands of hospitalizations and dozens of children killed by covid,” he stressed.
