| 17/02/2021 – 14:24 (GMT-4)
The National Center for Medical Genetics of Cuba recommended that children should receive the coronavirus vaccine, and has warned that those who have already passed the disease are at risk of re-infection.
On Tuesday, Dr. Beatriz Marcheco Terruel, director of the center, presented to the COVID-19 confrontation group the study called ‘Genetic risk factors associated with the clinical severity of COVID-19 in Cuban patients’, in which is recommended prophylactic vaccination of minors.
“Children under the age of 18 are silent disseminators of the disease, most often presenting asymptomatic forms. Almost half of the children who were entrusted do not have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, which poses a potential risk. of reinfection “, details the document, quoted on the website of the Presidency of Cuba.
Therefore, “it is recommended to consider this fact in the design of prevention strategies, including prophylactic vaccination,” he adds.
Since the pandemic began in Cuba in March 2020, 4,373 children under the age of 18 have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Currently 736 are active cases, among them a one-month-old baby who is in serious condition.
The research also showed other results, such as the absence of evidence of vertical transmission of mother-child disease, or of malformations in fetuses due to infection or therapeutic management.
In addition, it was found that the elderly and those in blood group A are more likely to develop severe forms of the disease.
In terms of mortality, the risk factors are increased age and suffering from cancer or diabetes mellitus.
For their part, patients who presented with very mild or none symptoms had fewer antibodies, which implies vulnerability to reinfection, “and makes it necessary to consider a personalized vaccination strategy for this group.”
Finally, the study notes that patients who suffered from the genetic characteristic of variant A of the gene for TNF-alpha, and who at the same time reside in the eastern part of the country, needed more time in the hospital and were 4.6 sometimes more symptomatic, when compared with the rest of the regions and with the G genetic variant of the gene itself.
In January the Cuban government announced that the children aged 5 to 19 years would participate in a clinical trial, Aimed at testing the efficacy of the Sobirana 01 and Sobirana 02 vaccine candidates in pediatric patients.
According to Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director general of the Carlos J. Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV), the study will give parents more peace of mind and make it possible for their children to attend school.
The expert considered that it is not necessary to vaccinate children under five, as they receive many vaccines during this stage and, in general, if they are infected it is because there has been a certain level of neglect. However, he left the door open to assessing that possibility, “perhaps when the pandemic ends.”
Vérez Bencomo said the trial will begin in late February and that his center will conduct “rigorous assessments” during the immunization of Cuban children.