Better late than never: vaccines for children are already ready in the USA, Russia is in no in a hurry

It is known that the lion's share of its deadly crop coronavirus collects from the elderly, it is among them that the mortality rate is highest. However, it turns out that this infection does not pass by children either. And more and more often. For example, in the Penza region , all the departments of children's hospitals are filled to capacity, and the number of cases continues to grow. A couple of weeks ago, the regional health minister Vyacheslav Kosmachev told reporters: "There are 200 covid beds for children in the children's hospital, and they are all full, we have never had this, last year there were up to 40 children." And this is despite the quarantines that schoolchildren are regularly sent to. In addition, pregnant women, of course, also suffer from covid. And then doctors have to fight for the life of both future mothers and unborn children. In the same Penza region, two women died of covid, one during gestation, the other immediately after childbirth.

Alexander Dragan, one of the leading Russian media analysts, explained: “Another feature is the shift in morbidity and severe cases to younger age groups. We observed this already in the summer, when it suddenly became clear that young people began to get sick, children began to get sick. Young people began to end up in intensive care, get on mechanical ventilation, and die.

Children should probably be mentioned separately. In the summer, these were rather the first alarm bells - not only the incidence among children increased, but also the severity of their illness. Statistically, we have seen this only in isolated cases. Now there are a lot of reports about seriously ill children. For example, recently there was news that six children of different ages died from covid in the Voronezh region. In the Orenburg region, three newborns with covid are in hospitals, and two of them are on mechanical ventilation. There was news about overcrowded pediatric wards: the Perm Children's Hospital was running out of seats and children with covid were simply put in the corridor..."

The situation is no better in other regions of the country. It prompts many parents to ask the question: when will the vaccine for children be ready? Is it really necessary to wait until they fall into despair for this? The point is not only that covid is less fatal for children than for adults, but first of all that it gives very serious complications that can greatly ruin the child's future life. Meanwhile, in civilized countries, this issue has long been attended to, and the first results have already been obtained. Despite the fact that according to statistics, children die 3600 times less often than the elderly (65+).

Molecular biologist and science journalist Irina Yakutenko writes about this in her blog:

“In the United States, the advisory board under the FDA regulator (an extended analogue of Rospotrebnadzor) has approved a Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years. It does not differ from an adult, but children's doses contain three times less vaccine antigen (active substance) than adults. Now it remains to wait for the decision of the CDC, the second main regulatory body, purely medical. If everyone approves everything, they can start vaccinating in the coming days. Moderna officials said yesterday that they are about to apply for an emergency use permit, too. We envy and wait until the approval procedure is completed in Europe.

The myth that children do not get sick or die from covid is very persistent, but it is a myth. They get sick and die, albeit less often than adults. And without vaccination of children, no one can see herd immunity, because for an infectious delta, the number of immunized people should be more than 85% - from the entire population, not only from adults..."