Vaccination of 5-8 year olds will begin this Thursday in Comunidad Valenciana

Wednesday 12th January 2022 – PRESS RELEASE with Mike Smith

The second phase of the pediatric vaccination campaign against the coronavirus in the Comunidad Valenciana begins this week and focuses on the 186,088 boys and girls aged between 5 and 8 years who study in schools in the region.

The operation, coordinated by the Ministry of Universal Health and Public Health and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, started last Monday with the request for authorizations to vaccinate and continues this Thursday with the administration of the first doses. This second phase of the campaign is expected to remain active until at least next week.

By educational levels, this stage covers infant students who have reached the age of 5 and those of 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade of Primary. In total, it is expected to vaccinate 22,085 students in the province of Castellón, 68,332 in Alicante and 95,671 in Valencia. Of this total, minors will be vaccinated whose families return the vaccination authorization to the educational centre and who on the day they are to receive the vaccine are not confined, sick or ill, or absent for any other reason.

In this sense, during this second stage of the pediatric vaccination campaign, a new opportunity will also be offered to those who could not be vaccinated in the previous phase.

To cover this phase of the pediatric vaccination campaign, the Comunidad Valenciana already has 192,640 doses and will receive 138,000 more in the coming days. In total, 330,640 doses.

Authorizations

The first task to be completed before receiving the vaccine is for the family to fill out, sign and deliver back to the school the authorization and the questionnaire on the health of each minor that the centre will have sent them. Families have a deadline to complete this process until Wednesday 12th January.

Once the authorizations are collected, the management of the educational centre will coordinate with the medical team that will travel to the school to administer the vaccines in order to know precisely the number of doses needed as well as to organize the operation in advance.

The unit that attends the school is made up of medical, nursing and logistical support staff, and has the appropriate means to deal with possible eventualities.

The process will take place in the schools themselves, during school hours and by educational level to preserve the usual groups of coexistence. This means that if a boy or girl has reached the age of 7 but for any reason is still in the first year of Primary, they are vaccinated with their classmates.

As in the first phase of the campaign, with the youngest children, a family member is also allowed to access the school at the time of vaccination to support them emotionally. It is very important that crowds are avoided at all times and, for this reason, the person should remain on the school grounds for as little time as possible. In fact, in many educational centres, the accompanying person waits outside the enclosure for 15 and 30 minutes after the injection, time in which the minors remain under observation.

With this second stage of the pediatric vaccination campaign, all boys and girls between 5 and 11 years old who reside in the Comunidad Valenciana, about 330,000, will be covered.

In the first phase, which developed normally before the Christmas holidays, all boys and girls from special education centres, rural centres and 4th, 5th and 6th grade primary schools whose parents or guardians authorized the vaccine (and were in a position to receive it, i.e. they were not confined or had serum contraindicated for medical reasons) were immunized.

Specifically, 107,360 students received the first dose of the Pfizer pediatric vaccine, seven out of ten schoolchildren at those levels.

Second dose from February

The second dose of the vaccine will be administered eight weeks after the first to increase the immune response, as established by the National Vaccination Strategy.

For this reason, if a sick child is in isolation on the day of the vaccination or cannot attend the appointment for any other reason, it is planned to provide them with new opportunities, as has been done with adults.

On the other hand, those who turn 12 years old between the first and the second dose will receive the first dose of the pediatric vaccine and the second adult dose (the one recommended from the age of 12) with the established period of eight weeks of the second dose.

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