Vaccinate children, another sensitive subject in parallel with compulsory vaccination. The Minister of Health Olivier Véran addressed this question on December 3, 2021 on the France Info platform. Despite the fact that there are no serious cases developed in children, the government member explained why he believed that vaccination was of interest to the population under 12 years old. Equipped with a mask throughout the televised interview, the doctor clearly wants to set an example by scrupulously following the barrier gestures that could slow down the fifth wave of the Delta variant, far from the image of politicians noticed without masks and hugging each other. hands in November.
“There are very few serious cases, but children can transmit. This is called a cocooning effect, when we protect and limit the spread, including among the population that does not have a symptomatic form, we avoid the spread to the most vulnerable populations and therefore we avoid a health impact“, explains Olivier Véran on France Info.
Vaccination is already planned for fragile children aged 5 to 11, who suffer from comorbidities, immuno-depression and chronic disease: “We could open it as of mid-end of December, when we receive Pfizer child-friendly doses, the decision has not been formally made but there is no reason not to.. “Asked about healthy children, he specifies that the High Authority of Health has not yet pronounced: “Because it takes a little longer to say if the vaccine is perfectly effective and if the benefit-risk balance is positive. In which case, we will open the vaccination to children at the beginning of January gradually and on an optional basis.“The vaccine for children is not exactly the same as that of adults, it is specific, specifies the minister at the request of journalists:”it is the same Pfizer vaccine but with a different dilution.“
The question of the child population divides the citizens because the question of the benefit-risk for the children is much less obvious than that of the elderly. On the airwaves of RMC, François Bayrou, High Commissioner for Planning and in favor of compulsory vaccination had adopted a serious tone to declare: “My fear, as a man, is that a mutation of the virus does not allow it to attack small children, babies. If that happens, and god forbid, let’s combine all of our strength to prevent it. If that happened, our society would not resist it. Because you cannot accept that small children are affected by a disease that we could have avoided, that we could have avoided.“