At two speeds the vaccination campaign of children this winter. Of the two new developments included in Castilla y León during 2023, bronchiolitis for newborns and influenza for children between 6 months and five years old, the first is already close to the 95 percent in three months, but the second one doesn’t quite take off.
In the first age group – from 6 months to 2 years -, immunization against a flu virus that already exceeds the epidemic threshold is somewhat higher, with 48.5 percent coverage and provinces advanced as Valladolid and Zamora which reach 53, but up to 5 years the rate decreases, according to the data provided by the Ministry of Health.
Something more than three out of ten minors has the protection of a vaccine that is intranasal and that pediatricians guarantee as “safe”, “effective” and with hardly any side effects. There are territories like Burgos where it remains at 22 percent.
“There is still room”
For this reason, the Board calls for vaccinating a sector of the population that is essential to contain the spread of the disease. “We still have room,” indicates the pediatrician at the Parque Alameda health center in Valladolid, Ana María Alonso. «Although we are already seeing cases of flu in children, the peak will arrive in January and February», he explains, before indicating that the peak of contagion in adults usually comes “two or three weeks later.” For this reason, he says, “the ideal is to stop it” in the child population to avoid the jump to the older ones and, in the process, worsening the symptoms.
For now, what health workers are observing is the arrival of gripe A con “very high fevers” for “several days” and “general malaise” in both adults and children. In the case of children, “in the majority there will be no complications,” but the vaccine can help prevent «otitis, pneumonia, bronchitis…», points out the pediatrician. “But there is also another collateral damage, which is the oversaturation of the system and the emergencies,” she points out.
Alonso explains the higher coverage rate between 6 months and 2 years because there are more visits to pediatricians at that time, “then it is more difficult to recruit them,” he indicates. “It may be by ignorance or because we already see them a little older and less vulnerable, but that is not the case,” he emphasizes, in addition to indicating that these little ones They can infect grandparents or older, a group that is much more vulnerable to the flu virus.
2023-12-26 06:57:50
#Pediatricians #call #childhood #flu #vaccination #due #coverage #Castilla #León
