MADRID – According to the Spanish Paediatric Association, the Covid vaccination in children between 5 and 11 years has only reached 46%. Therefore, the association calls for a greater effort from the authorities to raise awareness of the benefits.
It´s less than two weeks before children go back to school. However, health professionals are warning that vaccination against Covid-19 in children under 12 has been a ‘failure’. Less than half (46%) of that audience received the full schedule. However, this percentage is much higher at 96% among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years. Furthermore, they call the vaccination coverage among the adult population a ‘complete success.
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Importance of covid vaccination in children
Health authorities have failed because they did not campaign at all to emphasise the importance of vaccination among children. This is according to the Paediatrician Association.
More awareness for parents
In addition, paediatricians believe that it has also been a failure on the part of the professionals because “they have not been able to convey to the parents the importance of immunising children, because although the disease is usually mild in them, there are also among them serious illnesses and deaths.”
Doctors already predicted difficulty
Paediatricians warned that implementing COVID vaccination in children aged 6 months to 5 years would be difficult and could only be done if health authorities and healthcare professionals made an effort to convince families of the expected benefits and safety. And that has not happened to parents of children between the ages of 5 and 11, who therefore did not see it as urgent to have their children vaccinated.
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