Vaccination of children should be accelerated before fourth wave kicks in - Zacher
Zacher told news portal index.hu it is a huge problem that some countries and Africa and Asia are doing badly in terms of the vaccination rate, as “new mutations can hail from there, and there won’t be enough letters in the Greek alphabet to name them.”
Developed and emerging countries should strive to boost the vaccination rate as rapidly as possible globally. Another problem, he said is that Hungarians’ willingness to get vaccinated is limited and even GPs cannot persuade the unvaccinated to take up a vaccine.
Zacher added it was also worrisome that the government had set the vaccination campaign for school children only for the days right before school starts.
Under current plans, vaccination of children will take place in schools on 30 and 31 August and on 2 and 3 September, with the involvement of school doctors and GPs. About 200,000 registrations for COVID-19 shots have been received in the 12-17 age group so far.
Zacher has not addressed the possibly superspreading event of the four-day celebration of the foundation of the state (20 August), but he pointed to experts warning that two to three weeks after school starts could be when the fourth wave would kick in.
There's still peace. The system is still coping well but there’s no way of know how long it’ll stay like this
, he stressed.
Zacher noted that Covid departments can be set up within a relatively short time, as they have the experience with this kind of task. The more vital issue is staffing and what will happen to specialist practices and the pre-scheduled surgeries.
He reminded that they are expecting about one million people for the International Eucharistic Congress, including many elderly people that puts an increased burden on paramedics and the entire health care system therefore it is understandable if the emergency service at the Military Hospital (Honvédkórház) at Róbert Károly körút will be put on hold.
As regards the vaccination of children Zacher mentioned that Pfizer reported promising trial results in the vaccination of children older than 5, and he thinks this could reignite people’s inclination to get vaccinated.
There are 95,000 children on average in each age group (from 0 to 18), and Zacher estimates that if 10, 20 or 30 percent of them were inoculated against coronavirus, the country would come out of the pandemic as a winner.
He stressed that parents should be let in on as much scientific information as possible to have a clear outlook on the consequences of this serious virus, and understand that unvaccinated children may get Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C).
Zacher highlighted that those inoculated indeed have milder symptoms if they are infected with SARS-CoV-2, including eye inflammation, apathy, fatigue and other moderate symptoms.
There was a bus accident on the weekend on motorway M7 that claimed eight lives. Zacher said such accidents do not happen every day, but there were days in Hungary when 200 to 300 people died in coronavirus-related diseases. It was as if there were 30 such bus accidents a day, he illustrated the gravity of the pandemic.
Cover photo: Getty Images
