So far, 152 children under the age of ten have died from COVID-19 in Ecuador, between confirmed and probable cases, according to official statistics.
The saddest thing was to see that children died alone. Dr. Rosa Ávila still has those memories of the beginning of the pandemic. She is the head of pediatric intensive care at the IESS Quito Sur hospital. He recounts how difficult it was to accompany children infected with COVID-19. “The separation of parents from children. That was what hit me the most and it cost me ”, he laments. The only thing I could do was connect them by video call.
Figures from the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) show that, in the last five months, confirmed cases of COVID-19 in children aged five to nine years went from 4,672 to 5,620, this is a 20% increase. It is the age group where infections increased the most in percentage.
Until now, 152 children under the age of ten have died from COVID-19, between confirmed and probable cases, according to official statistics. That is why it is important that they get vaccinated, said Daniel Simancas, a research epidemiologist at the Equinoctial Technological University. He stressed that this prevents the risk of hospitalization and death.
Another reason to immunize children, Simancas added, is the well-being of the familyBecause “the more people are vaccinated in the same family circle, they will create a stronger barrier against COVID-19.”
Finally, the specialist rescues community protection as the third axis in favor of childhood vaccination. “It is vaccinated to protect not only the person, but society; if we do not reach high vaccination thresholds, the virus will continue to circulate ”, he stressed.
The doctor in pharmacology, Enríque Terán, and the president of the Ecuadorian Pediatric Society, Fernando Aguinaga, agreed on this. They participated last Monday in the forum “Myths of vaccines for COVID-19 in children”, organized by the newspaper EL UNIVERSO together with the San Francisco de Quito University (USFQ), the Glass Code portal and the Interuniversity Observatory of Ecuadorian Media (OIME).
The government plans to immunize 85% of the vaccinable population, that is, those over 5 years of age, until the end of the year. However, vaccination of children between the ages of five and eleven remains stagnant. Until last monday, 33% of them had the complete vaccination schedule.
The most worrying situation is in the province of Santa Elena, which had only 8% of vaccinated children, followed by Los Ríos with 10%.
Child vaccination has advanced more in Pichincha (with 53%), Loja (with 48%) and Galapagos (with 46%).
Enrique Terán explained that side effects from vaccination are mild and minority in relation to the number of deaths it prevents. “We must be certain that of the existing vaccines there is not a single one that has the possibility of producing the disease,” added Terán.
For the president of the Ecuadorian Society of Pediatrics, Fernando Aguinaga, although vaccines can have adverse effects, “parents should be sure that they do their children good by giving them these and any other vaccine on the normal vaccination schedule.”
Highlighted that parents should lose their fear of these vaccines, because “the technology of these has been used for years in childhood vaccination and that guarantees that it is not something new or experimental, as is thought”.
The Minister of Public Health, Ximena Garzón, announced that the government is analyzing the possibility of vaccinate school children between the ages of three and five, as is already being done in Colombia and Chile.
While that decision is being made, the alternative to protect those children under the age of five is to immunize the rest of the population, said Fernando Aguinaga, since the virus has less possibility of circulating in the environment.
She explained that although younger children cannot be vaccinated yet, “receive antibodies through the spread of breast milk or the placenta, in the case of pregnant women ”.
An expected increase
The increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases among children and adolescents is within the MSP’s estimates. “It is not a multiplicative increase, but to be expected according to the change in mobility ”, assured Francisco Pérez, national undersecretary of Public Health Surveillance.
He added that this increase has to do with the return to classes and the decrease in controls regarding capacity, holidays and festivities.
He also highlighted that mortality in this age group has not grown in recent months. According to the MSP, six children under 14 years of age died of COVID-19, between confirmed and probable cases, in the last semester.
Dr. Ricardo Morales is the head of Pediatric Emergencies at the Alianza Hospital in Quito. He has witnessed that in recent months there have been no cases of children with severe symptoms. He said that most have presented upper respiratory infection, pharyngitis or gastroenteritis. “This is the most common clinical picture with which children come, but most of them can be treated in the consultation, not so much in an emergency,” he said.
Dr. Rosa Ávila, from the IESS QUito Sur hospital, agreed with this experience: “The children have been more benevolent in that sense.” (I)
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