Vaccination of children to be carried out in schools

The Valencia health department announced yesterday that the rollout of the vaccination programme among five to 11-year-olds is to be done inside schools, rather than parents having to take their children to vaccination centres.

Following the approval on Tuesday by the ministry of health in Madrid, that school children could be vaccinated from 15 December, the regional governments were tasked with arranging the logistics of the programme.

On Monday the Comunitat Valenciana will receive 150,000 doses of the Pfizer pediatric coronavirus vaccine, which will allow all 11,10 and 9 year-olds to to be vaccinated before the Christmas holidays.

Valencia Health minister, Ana Barceló, said: “we will start with Speical Education Schools and immunosuppressed children and later, we will follow in age order with 11, 10 and 9.year-olds.

“After that we’ll continue going down the age groups with 8, 7, 6 and 5-year-olds, until we complete the vaccination of the 330,000 boys and girls aged between five and 11 in the Valencia region.”

To carry out the vaccinations, teams of health professionals will be dispatched to schools and special education centres.

The aim, according to the health department, is to bring the vaccine to the young population and avoid lots of visits, both for parents and for children, to health centres, so that the vaccination process will be carried out in the smoothest, most rapid and organised manner possible. To do so, health departments will get in touch with schools to organise timetables.

The vaccination will require the authorisation of parents or guardians and as such only children with that authorisation will be vaccinated.

Speaking on Cadena Ser radio today, Valencian president, Ximo Puig, said that before Christmas just children over nine would be vaccinated and that in the first week of 2022 vaccination would resume of children between five and nine.

He said: “it’s obvious that the mothers and fathers are the ones who in the end have to authorise the vaccination, and I ask, as with other vaccines, that they allow their children to be vaccinated because it is the most important antidote against the pandemic.”