Registration for vaccination of children aged 5 to 11 opens with major glitch in Hungary

The vaccination campaign for children aged 5 to 11 kicks off in Hungary with an awkward deficiency. The vaccination registration website now offers parents the possibility to register their child(ren) for their first COVID-19 jab, but our readers notified us that

the system only accepts e-mail addresses that had not been used there before.

In practice, this means that if you are a parent that had registered for COVID-19 shots before, then you need another e-mail address to sign your offspring up for a jab.

It is not a realistic expectation from the part of authorities that children aged between 5 and 11 have their own e-mail address.

Although having multiple e-mail addresses is not unusual, this is definitely not a user-friendly solution.

You will bump into the same problem if you have more than one child aged 5 to 11 and want to register all of them. In that case, the same number of (new) e-mail addresses you will need as many children you want vaccinated.

In the meantime, the government has announced on its Facebook page that the shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine next week will make the inoculation of 69,000 children possible as of 15 December.

Second doses will be available three weeks after the first jab. Children aged 5 to 11 will be vaccinated at designated vaccination locations in hospitals and at paediatrician GPs. Registration needs to be followed up by booking an appointment.

Why children and teens should get vaccinated for COVID-19

About half of the 590,000 adolescents aged 12 to 17 have been vaccinated against coronavirus in Hungary by the end of the 47th week (28 Nov).

Children are as likely to be infected with COVID-19 as adults and can

• Get very sick from COVID-19
• Have both short and long-term health complications from COVID-19
• Spread COVID-19 to others, including at home and school

As of mid-October 2021, children ages 5 through 11 years have experienced more than 8,300 COVID-19 related hospitalizations and nearly 100 deaths from COVID-19, the U.S. Centre for Desease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. In fact, COVID-19 ranks as one of the top 10 causes of death for children aged 5 through 11 years.

Children who get infected with COVID-19 can also develop serious complications like multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C)—a condition where different body parts become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Since the pandemic began, more than 2,300 cases of MIS-C have been reported in children ages 5 through 11 years. Children with underlying medical conditions are more at risk for severe illness from COVID-19 compared with children without underlying medical conditions.

What we know about MIS-C

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. We do not yet know what causes MIS-C. However, we know that many children with MIS-C had the virus that causes COVID-19, or had been around someone with COVID-19. MIS-C can be serious, even deadly, but most children who were diagnosed with this condition have gotten better with medical care.

What we don’t know about MIS-C

CDC is still learning about MIS-C and how it affects children, so we don’t know why some children have gotten sick with MIS-C and others have not. We also do not know if children with certain health conditions are more likely to get MIS-C. These are among the many questions CDC is working to try to understand.

All CDC recommendations are based on the best data and science available at the time, and we will update them as we learn more.

Cover photo: MTI/Péter Komka