Sao Paulo authorities rule out relationship between anticovid vaccine and cardiac arrest in a girl

The health authorities of the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo ruled out this Thursday the relationship between the anticovid vaccine and cardiac arrest suffered by a minor of 10 years 12 hours after having received the immunizer and that led to the suspension of childhood vaccination in an entire city.

“It was concluded that it is not an adverse event to the vaccine. There is no relationship with the immunizer supplied. What was discovered, unfortunately, was a problem in the heart (of the minor) of which the parents were not aware, “said the Secretary of Health of Sao Paulo, Jean Gorinchteyn, at a press conference.

“From the moment we were officially informed of the occurrence, which was a cardiorespiratory arrest in a female minor 12 hours after being vaccinated, we immediately set up a technical-scientific committee of 10 specialists to assess what put that girl at risk”, detailed Gorinchteyn.

As a result of the case, the city of Lençois Paulista, with 70,000 inhabitants and located in the interior of the state, suspended for 7 days the vaccination of children between 5 and 11 years old, which was authorized in the country since last Friday.

According to the secretary, who is an infectious disease doctor, with the conclusion reached in the case, vaccination is expected to be resumed in that municipality so that all children “Go back to class protected.”

The minor received the first pediatric dose of the vaccine from the US-German consortium on Wednesday Pfizer/BioNTech, until the day before, the only one authorized for children between 5 and 11 years old.

In a note, Pfizer stated that “there are no serious safety alerts related to the immunizer” and the clinical trials with 2,268 children carried out in the United States, Finland, Poland and Spain “they presented robust responses in the production of antibodies and a favorable safety profile”.

This Thursday, the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa, regulator) authorized the application in children between 6 and 11 years of age of the Coronavac vaccine, from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac and produced in Brazil by the Butantan Institute, attached to the Government of Sao Paulo.

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At the press conference, which was preceded by the vaccination of 100 children from a public school in Sao Paulo, the first of that age to receive the Coronavac, the governor, Joao Doria, indicated that with the stocks that the child population has (4.3 million) in the state will receive the first dose in the next 3 weeks.

And the 5-year-old children, who were not authorized to receive the Coronavac, will be vaccinated with the Pfizer immunizer.

In the event that the Ministry of Health, as the federal government has implied, does not acquire the Coronavac doses, Doria offered the immunizer for the states that require it.

Different from the Pfizer vaccine, which has a pediatric version, the Coronavac used in minors is the same as for adults because it is an immunizer “from adequate security profile with the virus inactivated”, declared the director of the Butantan Institute and hematologist, Dimas Covas.

These days Brazil is facing the highest peaks in infections during the pandemic but without a spike in deaths, which is attributed to the advancement of vaccination —almost 70% of its population with the full cycle of doses—. The country has almost 23.5 million confirmed cases and is approaching 622,000 deaths. (I)