11 points you need to know about vaccination of children against Covid<

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The newly opened registration for vaccination concerns almost half a million people and is currently the youngest group for which the vaccine against covid-19 is available in our country.

The government encourages the youngest to be vaccinated and warns that fully vaccinated children will no longer have to be tested. However, some parents remain skeptical – they often have unanswered questions. Experts rather recommend vaccination and refute some ambiguities.

Vaccination will take place at selected locations where a pediatrician or general practitioner for children and adolescents is available. If the vaccination site is part of a hospital with an inpatient pediatric department, according to the Ministry of Health, a pediatrician or practitioner does not have to be directly at the vaccination site. But it must be nearby and available in case of need.

The list of vaccination sites can be found at ockoreport.uzis.cz.

There are at least two such centers in every region. In most regions, however, there are more vaccination sites. There are even eight of them in Prague, Ostrava and Ústí nad Labem. When registering, interested parties are offered only those vaccination sites that are staffed for the vaccination of children.

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2. How to register a child?

Everything goes the same way as for adults. Registration and subsequent appointment booking are possible via the Central Registration System. According to the instructions of the Ministry of Health, people will first receive the first PIN code to access the registration form after filling in the phone number. After filling out the form and sending the application, interested parties will receive a confirmation of registration by e-mail and SMS.

When the selected vaccination site lists free dates, another SMS will arrive with a second PIN code and identification number for the vaccination reservation. People can contact telephone line 1221 with any questions.

Yes, for the age group of 12 to 15 years, the presence of a legal representative is necessary when applying the vaccination, as well as the need to fill out a questionnaire before vaccination. The legal representative will give informed consent to the vaccination (a written form is not required, but the vaccination site may request it in this form).

So far, only the Comirnaty vaccine from the Pfizer/BioNTech consortium has received all the necessary approvals from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for this age category. In Czech vaccination centers, therefore, children and young people over the age of 12 will receive only this substance for the time being.

However, the Spikevax substance from the company Moderna could also receive approval during the summer.

The EMA has not yet approved the vaccine for younger children. But the tests are ongoing. As The New York Times recently pointed out, the manufacturers of the Comirnaty fabric would like to obtain approval for the group of children from 2 to 11 years in September. Moderna is testing its vaccine on a group of children older than six months and expects results at the end of this year. Other companies also continue to test vaccines on children.

Side effects are similar in adolescents to adults. The most common include pain in the arm at the injection site, fatigue or headache. Fevers occurred slightly more often in juveniles than in adults.

A complete overview of the described side effects is available on the website of the State Institute for Drug Control. They are usually mild and resolve within one to three days.

“The immune response of children aged 12 to 15 years is not very different from that of even older children and young adults who have been tested in large studies involving tens of thousands of subjects. However, very rare side effects cannot be detected even by large clinical studies, and for that reason vaccines are monitored very carefully even after their registration," explained Daniel Dražan, general practitioner for children and adolescents and member of the committee of the Czech Vaccinology Society, to Seznam Zprávy.

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7. Why vaccinate children?

The risk of a severe course of covid-19, which would result in hospitalization or death, is significantly lower for children than for seniors. Nevertheless, experts recommend their vaccination for several reasons.

The risk of complications is not zero and they are also at risk of the disease - the vaccine thus protects them and their surroundings. In addition, the Sníh initiative draws attention to long-term health problems after experiencing covid-19, the so-called long covid, which every eighth infected child suffers from. Rarely, they may develop multisystem inflammatory response syndrome (PIMS-TS), which leads to inflammation of the blood vessels and can result in multiorgan failure. In the Czech Republic, almost 200 children with this syndrome were treated.

Mutation of the coronavirus is one of the frequently used arguments. In connection with the delta variant, which dominates in Great Britain, there is talk, for example, about the effects on younger generations, including children.

"In Britain, younger and younger age groups find themselves in hospitals. One in a hundred affected children must be hospitalized. In some regions, it accounts for up to 7 percent of new income," Rastislav Maďar, epidemiologist and dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ostrava, pointed out in an interview for Seznam Zprávy.

Virologists and geneticists point out the risk of the virus mutating in unvaccinated groups and the effort to achieve the highest possible collective immunity, which cannot be done without the involvement of children.

Variants in the Czech Republic

In the Czech Republic, according to official data, the alpha variant (formerly known as the so-called British) of the coronavirus predominates in positive samples. However, the delta variant (formerly known as the so-called Indian one) raises concerns. The State Institute of Health has so far confirmed it in 96 cases. According to the data known so far, this variant is capable of spreading faster in the population and is partially resistant to antibodies. It became dominant in the UK within two months.

The composition of vaccines for younger years is the same as that already received by hundreds of millions of adults around the world. The dosage is also the same – that is, two doses of the vaccine with 30 micrograms of the substance.

However, it is not excluded that the dosage will be adjusted in the future when applying the substance to even younger children. Also in this regard, some tests are already underway.

Some parents are concerned about whether the vaccine could affect children's health, affect fertility or ongoing puberty. But according to experts, such a thing is not possible from a biological point of view.

Voices against widespread vaccination of children

In addition to recommendations, there are also voices against widespread vaccination of children. The German Standing Committee on Vaccination (Stiko), an advisory body of the Robert Koch Institute, expressed this opinion. According to her, more scientific evidence is still missing. The vaccine should therefore only be given to children with chronic health problems who are at risk of a more serious course of covid-19. Roughly half of the children in the 12- to 17-year-old category to whom the Stiko recommendation applies suffer from asthma. Other health conditions that Stiko takes into account include diabetes, heart problems, chronic bronchitis, Down syndrome and obesity. So far, even the World Health Organization has chosen a restrained approach.

In general, the task of vaccines is to prepare the body to be able to defend itself against covid-19. Comirnaty contains a molecule called messenger RNA, which carries the instructions to make a so-called spike protein. This protein is found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 and the virus needs it to enter the body's cells.

“When the vaccine is given to a person, some of their cells will receive instructions from the mRNA and will temporarily make this spike protein. The person's immune system then recognizes this protein as foreign, creates antibodies against it and activates white blood cells to defend the body," explained the State Institute for Drug Control (SÚKL).

If a person later encounters the SARS-CoV-2 virus, their immune system will recognize the virus and the organism will be ready to defend itself against it. The aforementioned mRNA from the vaccine does not remain in the body, it breaks down shortly after vaccination.

Even before approval in Europe, Comirnaty for children over 12 years old received the green light from the authorities in Canada and the USA. In the United States alone, nearly seven million teens between the ages of 12 and 17 have been prescribed the substance, and data continues to be collected and analyzed.

European registration was preceded by a study with more than 2,000 participants. The manufacturers stated 100 percent effectiveness of the substance and did not observe any exceptional side effects. In addition, they point out that children receive a substance with the same composition, which has already been tested on millions of adults around the world and has proven its safety and effectiveness.

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Minister of Health Adam Vojtěch unequivocally recommends vaccination of children. According to him, there is no reason for parents' doubts about safety.

“If the vaccine had not been tested and if clinical data had not been available, it would not have received registration from the European Medicines Agency. At the moment, the vaccine from Pfizer has registration, it is based on clinical studies, and the agency guarantees that it is effective and safe for this age group as well," said the minister for Seznam Zprávy.

In addition to the aforementioned protection against covid-19, fully vaccinated children will be exempt from testing.

"Children's collectives can be a risk for the spread of the disease and its possible transmission to families, therefore we consider it important to vaccinate children against the disease covid-19. For fully vaccinated children, we assume that they would no longer be subject to testing," said the Minister of Health.

The vaccination certificate or EU covid passport can then be downloaded for the child on the portal ocko.uzis.cz. All you have to do here is enter your phone number, email address and date of birth. From July 1, the EU covid passport is a ticket for free travel within the entire EU. You can prove it in paper form or through the Tečka application.