Gianni Rezza: “For now there are no plans to vaccinate children”

“For now, the inclusion of children in the vaccination campaign is not foreseen. And this for several reasons: I am not aware of any experiments with children. They are also less susceptible to Sars-Cov-2 and more rarely have serious symptoms and illnesses. Third, they have not been identified as a population that supports the transmission of infection in the community ”. This was underlined by Gianni Rezza, director of prevention at the Ministry of Health, who spoke at the Health Risk Management Forum in Arezzo.

Compared to pregnant women, for whom the vaccine is contraindicated by guidelines in Britain, Rezza explains: “There are no studies for vaccination against Covid-19 during pregnancy and, since pregnant women are generally young and have a low risk of developing the disease Seriously, I think that in the first phase we can refrain from vaccinating them ”.

Young people and adolescents, due to other diseases, are considered drivers of the epidemic or those who bring the infection home, so they are often vaccinated to stop the spread of the infection. However, Rezza points out, “in the case of Covid we have no notion of which drivers are enduring the disease, so we will favor vaccination of those who are most vulnerable, such as the elderly or the frail, or those who are more exposed as health workers, instead of not vaccinating the groups that promote the disease ”.

Regarding herd immunity, that is, exceeding a population vaccination threshold, equal to 60-70%, added the expert, “this is a goal that must be achieved later, not at the beginning of the vaccination campaign Above all, we will have to protect those who are most at risk. “

Rezza then explained: “There is a trend towards an ongoing reversal, the RT tends to never go down” and at this time “we must have proactive attitudes to prevent the epidemic from restarting during the vaccination campaign: this is a risk to avoid “.

“In recent weeks – he added – we have seen a positive trend, but now we still have a high number of deaths, we are above the threshold of occupied places in the medical and intensive care area. RT and incidence are no longer going to go down. In this situation, caution is required ”.