(CNN Español) — As the children go back to classes face-to-face and that covid-19 cases skyrocket due to the delta variant, different countries are rushing to expand the reach of their vaccination programs.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, children represented 16.0% of the total accumulated cases of covid-19 in the United States, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. And for the week ending September 23, 26.7% of COVID-19 infections reported during the week were in children.
While many high-income countries – such as the United States and most members of the European Union – now offer vaccines against the new coronavirus for children 12 years and older, a handful of countries in Latin America have already started to apply the vaccine against covid-19 in people 17 years of age or younger. Even in some cases, eligibility begins exceptionally at 2 years – as in Cuba with its vaccine. Sovereign 2-, the youngest in the world, or at 6 years old, as in Chile and El Salvador.
However, as of September 1, 75% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean was not yet fully vaccinated against covid-19, according to data of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
PAHO Director Carissa F. Etienne indicated that “coverage continues to be in the single digits in Central American nations such as Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua,” while in countries such as Haiti and Venezuela, the fragility of health systems and internal political challenges are factors that have delayed vaccination.
Eligibility in Latin America
Countries such as Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay were the first to start vaccinating from the age of 12.
Below we tell you which countries are already vaccinating their youngest population, from what age they are eligible and what is the vaccine that is being offered in each Latin American country, according to data compiled by the organization Americas Society / Council of the Americas (AS / COA).
Although Mexico authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine in children over 12 years of age in June, it was not until October that it was announced that the vaccine would begin to be applied to children between 12 and 17 years of age, but only if suffer from a chronic illness. The registration for this sector of the population began on October 1, according to the Government of Mexico.
The situation is similar in Brazil, where it has not begun to vaccinate children under 18 years of age despite the fact that the National Sanitary Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) authorized – also in June – the emergency use of the vaccine Pfizer in minors between 12 and 17 years old.
The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean report a total of 45 million cases of covid-19 and almost 1.5 million deaths, equivalent to 31% of total deaths in the world, according to the current figures monitored by CNN with data from Johns Hopkins University. Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Argentina register the highest number of deaths in the region.
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