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Brazil’s health regulator on Thursday approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 for use in children aged five to 11 years.
However, it is not clear when the country will start vaccinating children.
The matter now goes to the Ministry of Health, which will first have to decide whether to add COVID-19 vaccines for children 5-11 years old to the national immunization program and provide appropriate doses for children – one third of adult dose.
“Collective vaccination reduces the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to this age group and, as a result, reduces transmission from children and adolescents to adults and the elderly,” said Meiruze Freitas, director of the Brazilian health regulator, announcing the decision.
The pandemic has claimed more than 615,000 lives in Brazil, second only to the United States in total.
However, cases and deaths have decreased as Brazil has increased vaccination. Currently, 66 percent of the country’s 213 million people are fully vaccinated.
The massive immunization campaign comes amid comments against the vaccine by far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who jokingly said the vaccine could “turn you into an alligator” and refused to be vaccinated himself.
With the world nervously watching the new highly contagious variant of the Omicron virus, Germany, Spain, Greece, Croatia and Hungary have all opened their own vaccination campaigns for younger children recently.
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