Covid, pediatricians: “Vaccine children or we won’t get out”

“Children must be vaccinated” against Covid “otherwise we will not get out of it. 20% of the infected are under 11 years of age”. This was stated in no uncertain terms by the president of the Italian Society of Preventive and Social Pediatrics (Sipps), Giuseppe Di Mauro. After all, as emerges from the national update on the Covid epidemic of last November 3, the incidence of Sars-Cov-2 in the population is increasing in all age groups, with higher values ​​in the 0-19 age group. In the last 30 days, moreover, in our country there is a higher incidence of diagnosed cases in unvaccinated people and it is at this time the news that more than one in four children over the age of 12 received a single dose of vaccine. Numbers that push pediatricians to express the strong hope that the vaccine will soon be authorized for the age group 5-11 years. And “to those who say not to vaccinate healthy children – says Di Mauro – let’s say: the vaccine must be given to everyone, whether they are healthy or with previous pathologies, because – the pediatrician clarifies – this infection, in children, does not always manifest itself as a banal flu. Even the youngest ones – he remembers – are hospitalized and some end up in intensive care. The paucisymptomatics can then bring this infection into their families and put adults at risk, even vaccinated but with pathologies. To interrupt the chain of infections from Covid -19 – insists the Sipps summit – which is transmitted through droplets of saliva, we must vaccinate all children. We must do it to protect them but also to secure their peers with diseases and families “. Extend vaccination to range 5 -11 years, Sipps points out, would mean offering the possibility of reducing the risk of becoming infected with Covid-19 to about 3,700,000 children. From the beginning of the pandemic to today – the pediatricians recall – there have been 783,996 cases between 0 and 19 years, of which about 190 thousand between 5 and 11 years. It has been calculated that if this age group had already been vaccinated, assuming an efficacy of the vaccine at 80%, about 140 thousand of those children who contracted the virus would not have fallen ill, “avoiding them – notes Roberto Liguori, Sipps pediatrician – quarantine, social withdrawal, absence from school, distance from social and family life, in addition to the risk of developing severe forms of the disease and infecting family members “. And his colleague Luciano Pinto adds: “We pediatricians must insist with parents by making them understand that we must not be afraid of the vaccine, but of the disease. An unvaccinated child – explains the doctor – not only runs the risk of getting sick, but also of stay out of social life, out of the normality that we hope will soon be found. Moreover, in many families it is already happening that the unvaccinated are not welcome and this – he concludes – could also involve children in the near future “.