QCOSTARICA – The vaccination of children between the ages of 5 and 11 in Costa Rica, will begin on Tuesday, January 11, announced Casa Presidencial. The campaign will begin with 11-year-olds and will decrease by one year in age, on average, every three or four weeks, according to the agreement of the National Vaccination and Epidemiology Commission (CNVE), said the announcement made Thursday.
The vaccines, 64,380 doses from Pfizer / BioNTech that will be used in that age group will arrive this Friday morning, January 7, of which 48,000 are pediatric first doses and 16,380 are for people over 12 years of age.
El 11 de enero será un gran día: iniciará vacunación contra COVID-19 de niños y niñas de 5-11 años. Esta madrugada llegarán primeras 48 000 dosis pediátricas, confirmó Pfizer/BioNTech. Se iniciará con niñas y niños de 11 años. ¡Cuidamos la salud de nuestra niñez! @CCSSdeCostaRica pic.twitter.com/2BrBGCaisY
— Carlos Alvarado Quesada (@CarlosAlvQ) January 7, 2022
“January 11 will be a great day: vaccination against COVID-19 of boys and girls ages 5-11 will begin. The first 48,000 pediatric doses will arrive this morning, confirmed Pfizer / BioNTech. It will start with 11-year-old girls and boys. We take care of the health of our children!” Tweeted President Carlos Alvarado.
“The start of vaccination for boys and girls from 5 to 11 years old brings peace of mind for parents who wanted the protection of our sons and daughters. This population is the present and the last group that we still need to cover in the vaccination campaign. By vaccinating children, we will inject ourselves with hope because we will be closer to exiting this ordeal,” said the president in a press release.
On October 25, adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 were included in the campaign against covid. At that time, there was talk of a coverage goal of some 188,427 adolescents who had yet to start their protection scheme against this disease.
Who and where?
As of January 11, those who are 11 years old will be able to go to the different vaccination centers that the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS) has throughout the country.
The National Vaccination Commission agreed that children with high-risk conditions will be called by the medical centers where they carry out their control so that they receive the vaccine there. This group includes patients with diseases such as cancer, sickle cell disease, heart disease, infantile cerebral palsy, myelomeningocele, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes.
In this high-risk group are also minors with cystic fibrosis, severe asthma, oxygen-dependent, tracheostomized, patients with primary immunodeficiencies, rheumatic autoimmune disease (juvenile idiopathic arthritis, juvenile dermatomyositis, lupus, systemic sclerosis, vasculitis), and HIV infection.
The minor beneficiaries of organ transplants, with Down syndrome and tuberculosis will be able to receive the vaccine against covid-19 in all vaccination centers. In all these cases, the second dose will be applied three weeks after the first.
Children who received the first dose of Pfizer / BioNTech pediatric vaccine abroad will be able to receive the second dose in Costa Rica. They must request it in the health area of assignment and present the foreign vaccination card.
With a view to the start of the next school year, scheduled for February 17, the Commission authorized teachers to receive the third dose for as long as they have had the second dose for at least six months.
The announcement is made at a time when the country is experiencing an increase in cases associated with the omicron variant, which is more contagious, although with less capacity to become seriously ill and kill.
This Thursday, the Ministry of Health confirmed 2,981 new cases of covid-19. There are 165 people hospitalized (25 more than this Wednesday), 55 of them in Intensive Care (ICU).
Only one death from causes related to the new coronavirus was registered in the last 24 hours.
In addition, the Costa Rican Institute for Research and Teaching in Nutrition and Health (Inciensa), confirmed Thursday afternoon that omicron is now throughout the national territory.
In just two weeks, it became the most common in the samples analyzed, as it was detected in 47 of 88 cases (53.41%) studied. The remaining samples correspond to the delta variant.
