Without sufficient personnel, gradual vaccination of minors

With the initial plan, it was intended to vaccinate 12 and 13-year-old students in one school per day, when in Tijuana there are around 300 secondary schools, so the school year would not be enough to immunize more than 120,000 minors.

One year and three months after the anti-COVID vaccination began, immunization was authorized for adolescents aged 12 and 13 in Baja California, however, the process will be long, since they will only cover one school at a time.

The vaccine Pfizer/BioNTech was authorized to be applied to children between 5 and 17 years of age since the beginning of October 2021 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States, and since then, it began to be applied to this age group in the most developed countries.

In Mexico, 15-year-olds and older were allowed to be vaccinated, since November of that year, as well as young people 12 and older with comorbidities, due to their vulnerability, but those who were healthy had to wait until Monday, May 9, 2022. .

In an interview conducted by the newspaper The country Andreu Comas, doctor and academic from the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, highlighted that Mexico has a lag of more than seven months in childhood vaccination.

In the same text, it was pointed out that the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks authorized the application of the vaccine to children from 5 years of age, however, the federal authority has not included them in the National Vaccination Program, under It states that minors are not as vulnerable as other age groups of the population, despite the fact that Stage 5 of the national program, which runs from July 2021 to March 2022, includes vaccination of the entire population over 5 years of age.

Until January 2022, Baja California had registered the death of 60 minors due to the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus since the pandemic began, 36 of them in Tijuana.

VACCINATION IS DELAYED

On Tuesday, April 26, it was announced that from the 28th of the same month, the platform would be opened www.mivacuna.salud.gob.mx for children under 12 and 13 years old to register. The plan was that as of Monday, May 2, they would begin to vaccinate, but it did not happen. The vaccination day was delayed a week, and was only carried out in three schools in BC: one in Tijuana, another in Mexicali and one more in Ensenada.

“We do not know why it was officially delayed, but we have noticed a lot of disorganization, it was not defined what the logistics were going to be, if the parents were going to take the minors, if it was going to be in the schools, or which schools were going to be considered. ”, he confided to ZETA one of the vaccinators.

On Monday, May 9, the test was done at the State Secondary School Number 25, located in the Los Valles subdivision, in the East Zone of Tijuana. The schedule was scheduled from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., to cover the two shifts, but they started at 12:00 p.m. and the chaos was evident.

The line was made up of more than 100 children, most of them accompanied by their parents, who filled out the registration forms and gathered outside the room, where a brigade of eight vaccinators administered 600 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech.

“I bring my girl to be vaccinated, she is 12 years old and everyone in the family is already vaccinated, with everything and reinforcement, she was just missing. I think it took them a while to vaccinate the minors, and the children are still missing, because they have already entered classes for a long time and they had not been remembered, ”said María, while she filled out the registration form.

Enrique Campos Gutiérrez, deputy medical chief of Sanitary Jurisdiction 2, justified that the choice of that particular school to start vaccinating young people was due to the fact that it was the only one that complied in time in requesting the authorization of the parents.

ONE BY ONE

On the same Monday, May 9, it was determined that on Tuesday the 10th there would be no day for the celebration of Mother’s Day, but as of Wednesday the 11th, three schools would continue with the campaign: General Secondary School Number 4 “Ricardo Flores Magón”, in Meadows of La Mesa; General Number 2 “Reform Laws” in the Libertad neighborhood; and General 116 Siglo XXI in Mariano Matamoros.

The goal was for the two brigades assigned to each school to cover the two shifts and advance gradually, but in the end the strategy was changed, and at least in Tijuana, from carrying out shifts in three schools, now it will be one by one.

“Apart from the activities in the schools, we also bring others to the field, we are visiting shelters, homes and shelters for migrants, so all of this limits us in the deployment of personnel. The intention is that at least, for the activity of the schools, we have two brigades”, affirmed the deputy medical chief.

On Wednesday, May 11, the Health authorities announced that in Mexicali, the vaccination would be in two secondary schools, in San Felipe in a high school, and in four secondary schools in Vicente Guerrero. In Tijuana it was only left in General 4, on Thursday the 12th in the Mariano Matamoros and today, Friday, May 13 in the Libertad neighborhood.

“It took a long time to vaccinate the children, and I still need my child who is days away from turning 5 -years old- they still do not tell us when they are vaccinated, I understand that minors hardly get sick from COVID, or at Fewer have more defenses than adults and that vaccination is for mere prevention, but they let a lot of time pass, “explained Marco Antonio Bustos, father of the family.

understaffed

According to the deputy medical chief of Sanitary Jurisdiction 2, they only have about 18 people to vaccinate the 120 thousand children between 12 and 13 years of age in Baja California, although the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI) reports 64 1,996 children aged 12 and 61,418 aged 13, for a total of 126,414. The strategy is to vaccinate in each school, one at a time.

Information from the State Government refers that the entity has 572 campuses, around 305 only in Tijuana; If they advance along this border one campus per day, it would take almost a year to finish, and the school year ends on July 15.

On the other hand, teachers from Secondary School 29 pointed out that they have not been given a specific date for the vaccination of their students, however, they have carried out surveys to census young people who have already been vaccinated in other states or in California, as well as the biological that was applied to them.

“They haven’t told us, nothing, they just came from the state to do a survey where they asked how many of them were already vaccinated and what vaccine they were given, but here there are very few who were vaccinated, and obviously it was with Pfizer, I understand that it is the only one authorized”, said Carmen, one of the teachers.

The last shipment of vaccine Pfizer/BioNTech that arrived in Mexico, was received in September 2021, with 7 million doses. At the beginning of January of the current year, the last batch arrived in Baja California, which has managed to cover minors between 15 and 17 years of age.

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