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According to the current state of knowledge, children under the age of ten are not super-spreaders when it comes to coronavirus. The situation is different with influenza: children are “a motor” in the classic wave of influenza, as Health Minister Rudolf Anschober (Greens) said at a press conference in Vienna on Monday. They can also become seriously ill and there have even been deaths in recent years.
The flu vaccine serves not only for individual protection, but also to prevent it from spreading, Anschober stressed. And children are one of the main transmitters of seasonal viruses. Annual vaccination is recommended starting at six months.
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Free Flu Vaccination Is Also Said To Protect Older People
The flu vaccination included in the free childhood vaccination program aims to protect both the elderly and vaccinated children. Children are a “driver of the flu epidemic” and contribute significantly to its spread, Health Minister Rudolf Anschober (Greens) said at a press conference in Vienna on Monday. “Go to the doctor with your child,” recommended Thomas Szekeres, president of the Medical Association, but also called on “everyone” to get vaccinated. “If you only vaccinate 20 percent of children and adolescents, then it has a better effect on preventing the mortality rate among the elderly than if you vaccinate 90 percent of people over 65 years of age,” explained Ursula Wiedermann- Schmidt, president of the National Vaccination Board. Therefore, it is “much wiser to protect children” and influenza vaccination for young children and school children also has a “public health aspect” to do.
“We know that the infection rate among children is much higher than the population average,” said Hans Jürgen Dornbusch, head of the specialist group at the Society for Pediatric Medicine (ÖGKJ). Children have a higher and longer lasting virus shedding than adults, the pediatrician emphasized.
With Covid-19, younger people tend to be less affected by serious illnesses, with the flu, the proportion is different. The annual rate of hospitalization for children with influenza is 128 per 100,000 population. That’s “not so little,” Wiedermann-Schmidt emphasized. In the 2017/18 flu season, there were nine deaths among children from flu viruses and five in the 2018/19 season.
According to Wiedermann-Schmidt, between 450,000 and 1.3 million Austrians of all age groups are affected by influenza each year. That means an average of around 400,000 doctor visits and sick leave. Additionally, there are 500 and an average of 1,000 deaths per year in temperate years. At the press conference, all the experts highlighted the importance of vaccination against influenza for children, pregnant women, chronically ill, elderly and health workers. The subject limit has dropped: Waiting parents can get vaccinated at their partner’s gynecologist, or parents can go to the pediatrician, Szekeres said.
Of the more than 1.2 million doses of vaccines ordered across Austria for this year’s flu season, 350,000 are now destined for the free childhood vaccination program. The city of Vienna is giving away its 400,000 cans, some of which it has asked for, free of charge for all age groups. The other vaccines are distributed by Bundesbeschlassung GmbH (BBG) broken down according to the number of inhabitants in the federal states, Anschober explained.
The vaccine to be administered with a syringe for infants from the sixth month of life and children up to two years of age is delivered to pediatricians from mid-October to mid-November, the nasal spray for children from two to 15 years from mid-November until mid-December. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year there will also be a free flu vaccination for the nearly 100,000 hospitalized residents of care facilities across Austria, which should be available by the end of November. “It’s not wise to panic” to vaccinate earlier, Wiedermann-Schmidt emphasized. The effect lasts for about six months and flu waves generally don’t start until December or early January with the peak in February.
The flu and the coronavirus pandemic coincide this year, Anschober said. This is an initial situation “that does not facilitate our work”, possibly also with regard to the capacities of the health system. In the two important cases of disease, corona and influenza, the same measures work apart from a flu vaccine, he asked the Minister of Health to comply with hygiene measures, keep a distance and use oral and nasal protection.
