Vaccination against the novel coronavirus will be open for all school children as of tomorrow.
The government approved the launch of the vaccination for children aged 5 to 11 as of September 9.
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Health Minister Vladimír Lengvarský said after the cabinet session that the vaccination of children is voluntary. Doses will be administered upon the request of parents and approval of the child's paediatrician.
Children will get one-third of the ordinary dose of the Comirnaty vaccine by Pfizer/BioNTech and paediatricians will administer the dose.
Experts demanded it
The minister declared that the decision to vaccinate children younger than 12 was based on the demands of experts, paediatricians and other doctors caring for children.
“It should help protect especially sensitive groups of children who could have some problems if they come into contact with Covid-19 if they aren't vaccinated,” Lengvarský noted, as quoted by the SITA newswire.
He added that the vaccine is recommended for certain diagnoses among children, but it has to be approved by a paediatrician or another expert.
If there is a parent or a grandparent in the family who is exposed to a higher risk of being infected with Covid but cannot be vaccinated, paediatricians could approve the immunisation of a child younger than 12 years, paediatrician Elena Prokopová told the Denník N daily.
Healthy children under 12 with healthy parents and relatives will not be vaccinated for now. Meanwhile, in new guidelines the ministry has specified which diseases can have a serious effect on the course of Covid in the case of children.
The Slovak Society of Alergology and Clinical Immunology stated on August 30 that they recommended making the vaccination available for children younger than 12 in individual cases where risk factors for developing severe Covid have been identified. They listed chronic respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, immunity-related diseases and oncological diseases among these.
