Vaccination played a decisive role in the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring the end of the public health emergency of international concern caused by covid-19, say experts consulted by the Brazil Agency.
For them, with the end of the most critical period caused by the disease, immunization needs to be maintained and expanded, reaching groups that are still little protected by immunising agents, such as children.
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Member of the strategic committee of WHO vaccination experts, professor at the Federal University of Goiás Cristiana Toscano closely followed the development and use of vaccines against covid-19. With the end of the health emergency, the infectologist considers that, in addition to remembering that the disease will not disappear, it is necessary to reinforce that vaccination continues to be important.
“We are in a situation that is changing to what we call routine, but we will continue to see the circulation and occurrence of the disease. We will continue to need to keep vaccination up to date, especially in the highest risk groups”, she says .
The infectologist, who is also a member of the Brazilian Society of Immunizations, points out that, due to vaccines, so many changes are not expected in the scenario of transmission of the virus and the disease, which made it possible to end the health emergency, on Friday (5). Even so, the circulation of the Ômicron variant and its subvariants makes booster doses indispensable.
“With the Ômicron variant and its derived subvariants, we need at least three doses to be protected against severe illness and death. And, in higher risk groups, we need periodic boosters, according to specific guidelines for each group,” she says.
“Yes, it’s good news. Yes, it’s important for us to learn what we’ve been learning from this experience, and it’s very important that we move forward in terms of increasing vaccine coverage, not only for covid, but for other preventable diseases for vaccines, and prepare for other public health emergencies around the world.”
Since the start of vaccination against covid-19, 13.3 billion doses of vaccines have been applied worldwide, according to the WHO. In Brazil, more than 514 million doses were applied, according to the Ministry of Health, and more than 166 million people took at least two doses.
unprotected children
The coordinator of the Childhood Health Observatory, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and the Faculty of Medicine of Petrópolis at the Arthur de Sá Earp Neto Center (Unifase), Patrícia Boccolini, recalls that, although vaccines have made it possible to end the emergency health, many people have been deprived of access to them around the world. Among this population are children who were not taken by their guardians to be vaccinated.
“Data from Observa Infância that we collected show that vaccination coverage for children aged 3 and 4 years did not reach 20%. We have very low coverage for this public. And, according to the epidemiological bulletin of the Ministry of Health, in 2022, we had 550 deaths of children from covid”.
Patrícia Boccolini points out that it is necessary to continue and intensify the effort so that vaccines reach all countries and all parts of the population within each country, correcting the discrepancies that currently exist.
“We have to bear in mind that the committee’s message is that countries continue to vaccinate and continue to fight misinformation and fake news about vaccines, mainly focused on covid-19. We will live with the virus for a long time. We cannot let vaccine coverage fall and we need to expand vaccine coverage for children under 5 years old”.
evolving virus
Virologist responsible for sequencing the Gamma variant before the most critical moment of the pandemic in the country, Fiocruz Amazônia researcher Felipe Naveca celebrates the end of the health emergency, which caused more than 700,000 deaths in Brazil. Despite the news being “an encouragement”, he defends that the genomic surveillance work must continue.
“We need to continue to monitor at least a percentage of these cases over time so that we can see if the virus will, at some point, evolve in a way that it becomes a threat. But, at this moment, this is very good information , very good news,” he says.
“We continue to see the virus evolve, with different strains emerging, sometimes even with an increase in the number of cases. But we are not seeing a significant advance in the increase of severe cases”.
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