Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Work and Pensions at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, on July 20, 2021.
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LONDON – Dr Anthony Fauci has outlined three key reasons supporting the case for vaccinating young people against coronavirus, citing short- and long-term benefits for the entire population.
Speaking to a British audience at a conference hosted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine earlier this week, the leading infectious disease expert in the United States discussed the importance of “long Covid”, the benefits of a move to a three-dose vaccination unit. and why he believes it is important to vaccinate children.
“I think … we should vaccinate children, and there are several reasons,” Fauci said Wednesday.
First, he described young people as “spreading vehicles” for the virus, noting that the transmissibility of the fast-spreading delta variant continued to fuel an increase in cases where schools reopened to the virus. autumn.
Fauci said the situation is particularly alarming in the southern states of the United States, with intensive care units in pediatric hospitals currently having the maximum capacity in Florida, Texas, Georgia and Mississippi. Doctors and epidemiologists fear that the increase in Covid hospitalizations could worsen even if children are not vaccinated and that school districts impose mask warrants and other safety precautions.
“We’re almost overwhelmed. We now have a lot of kids in hospitals,” Fauci said. “Thus, while relatively speaking, compared to an adult suffering from such a serious illness, we have lost more SARS-CoV-2 children than we ever lose to the flu and vaccinate the children against the flu.”
A woman walks near the emergency entrance of Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital.
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A third reason to support the case of vaccinating children against coronavirus, Fauci said, was the possible long-term effects of the infection.
“We don’t know what the effects will be on anyone, including children. So it may be to our dismay that infected children have long-term consequences that we don’t fully appreciate right now,” Fauci says. dit.
“For these reasons, one of transmissibility, one of the severity of the disease and one uncertainty about the long-term consequences, I am firmly committed to vaccinating our children.”
What is the position of the UK?
Fauci said that despite his opinion, children should be vaccinated against Covid-19, but he did not want to “disperse” the decisions taken so far by the British authorities.
Official vaccine advisers in the UK have not recommended the vaccine for healthy children aged 12 to 15, an action that puts the country in conflict with the US, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and many nations of Europe.
The Joint Vaccination and Vaccination Committee of the United Kingdom said earlier this month that it does not recommend vaccination for young people aged 12 to 15 because it believes that “the profit margin is considered too small” to vaccinate the whole group. age.
The JCVI added that it is not up to it to examine the broader social impacts of vaccination in this age group, such as educational benefits, and noted that the government “may wish to obtain more views on the wider social and educational impacts “.