child vaccination starts in Brazil

child vaccination starts in Brazil

An 8-year-old boy received his first dose at an official ceremony on Friday January 14. Ten million doses are to be administered from Monday despite anti-vax criticism from President Bolsonaro, as the population has embraced vaccination en masse.

Davi Seremramiwe Xavante, an eight-year-old indigenous boy with a disability, was the first Brazilian child to be vaccinated, during an official ceremony at the São Paulo Clinics Hospital. This ceremony took place in the presence of Joao Doria, center-right governor of the state of São Paulo, fierce opponent of President Jair Bolsonaro and presidential candidate for October too.

It was already in São Paulo, the largest metropolis in Brazil, with 12 million inhabitants, that the very first injection of a dose of anti-Covid vaccine in Brazil had taken place, to a 54-year-old black nurse, on January 17, 2021.

Mass vaccination of 5-11 year olds will begin next week across the country with pediatric doses of Pfizer-BioNtech’s vaccine, and will need to be authorized by parents. More than 20 million children will be able to be immunized, with doses of pediatric vaccine from the American laboratory Pfizer-BioNtech, and subject to parental authorization. Children with comorbidities and populations considered more vulnerable, such as indigenous people, are prioritized.

Vaccination progresses

To date, more than two-thirds of the Brazilian population have received two doses of Covid vaccines, and almost 80% have received the first dose. The campaign started late due to criticism from the president Bolsonaro towards the effectiveness of vaccines and their potential side effects, indicates our correspondent in Rio de Janeiro, Martin Bernard.

These delays explain why only 15% of the population received a dose of reinforcement, while the wave of the Omicron variant is falling on Brazil, with more than 100,000 cases recorded per day. However, it is precisely advances in vaccination that have avoided a sharp increase in deaths and the saturation of hospitals.

Jair Bolsonaro suggested that the Omicron variant was “ welcome in Brazil, because it could signal the end of the pandemic, and argued that the vaccination of children was not necessary, because, he said, no child would have succumbed to the virus, before being denied by the facts.

Read also: Brazil: partial cancellation of the Rio carnival due to the increase in Covid-19 cases

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