Covid, pediatrician: “Halt vaccination for 12-19 year olds, doing it at school helps parents”

Unvaccinated children, parents yes. “About half a million children between the ages of 12 and 19 have not yet received the Covid vaccination while their parents have already done so”. This is the estimate of the pediatrician Italo Farnetani, according to which a “reduced adherence to vaccinations by families with minors” could in several cases be “due not so much to a reason for refusing the vaccine – given that the parents did so – as much as to logistical difficulties “. For this reason the expert re-launches the proposal to overcome these difficulties by bringing the shield injections ‘between the school desks’. “The daily data – explains the full professor of paediatrics of the Free Ludes University of Malta at Adnkronos Salute – prove it: since the possibility of vaccinating over 12s opened, we reached a peak on 12 August with 71,165 administrations carried out” in 12-19, “at a time when many work activities were closed for the week of August 15th. Another day with a high level of participation was Saturday 4 September with 70,323 administrations, linked to the imminent start of the school. This driving effect, however, decreased progressively with the resumption of social and work commitments of families. In fact, in the last 3 days 48,098 doses were administered on Saturday 25 September, 47,534 Sunday 26 and 47,044 Monday 27 (a total of 142,676 doses). 9.6% “. The organizational and logistical difficulties, for Farnetani, could be the ones that weigh more. And there are further data that could be read in this direction for the pediatrician: “In the 12-19 age group 31.97% did not receive any vaccine while in the age group of the parents of these adolescents (40- 49 years) the percentage of unvaccinated drops to 20.99%. Parents are more vaccinated than children. And based on these data, half a million unvaccinated adolescents have already immunized mothers and fathers “. So “in the case of several families, the non-immunization of the minor would not be linked to ‘no-vax’ reasons since mom and dad did the vaccine”, is the reasoning of the expert who asks to intervene to facilitate choices. vaccines for this segment of the population. The invitation is therefore not to underestimate the impact of organizational difficulties, says Farnetani, who recalls: “Some of my data reveal a greater adhesion of families when the vaccine is administered at school than when they have to actively move” the parents and the ‘vaccinating’. “Even if an impressive vaccination campaign has been organized in Italy with many mobile centers in the places with the greatest concentration of people, in my opinion the administrations within the school complexes during school hours must be organized because half a million pupils should be left without vaccination , when they could be immunized it is a risk especially for themselves and makes it more difficult to avert the need for quarantines and Dads. Without forgetting that half a million vaccines administered, according to international data, avoid 7,100 cases of Covid, 200 hospitalizations, 54 hospitalizations in therapy intensive and 2 or 3 deaths “, he concludes.