Israeli Health Ministry to Open Panel to Public on Vaccinating Children

On Friday, the Health Ministry announced that its panel discussion regarding coronavirus vaccinations for kids between the ages of 5 and 11 would be open to the public. It disclosed that the upcoming panel would be aired live and group of 20 people would be able to ask questions, once they have been pre-vetted. The ministry said that the Israel Center for Disease Control (ICDC) wanted the process to be transparent, so they had invited the public to put forward any questions may have to the experts and to voice their opinion to the members of the committee, all of which will be broadcasted live.

This debate has been scheduled to take place at 3 p.m. on Thursday, but the Health Ministry said that a final recommendation wouldn’t be made by the ICDC about the vaccination of 5 to 11-year-olds during the debate. They would make a recommendation at a later date. People who want to be part of the panel are required to submit a request that should highlight an appropriate reason for their participation. They would select 20 people in total from the public and this choice will be random. The ministry said that these people would each be given three minutes to speak during the debate. 

The ministry also added that the public was free to put forward questions to the hearing and the committee members would certainly address some of them. As per the Israeli Health Ministry officials, the approval for the children-size doses of the coronavirus vaccine for kids between the ages of 5 and 11 could be given as early as mid of November. The child-size dose has already received the approval of US regulators and Israel tends to follow suit. The same dose had already received the approval of an advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States.

They declared that the potential benefits of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in preventing infection in kids were a lot higher than the potential risks. Israel is already giving full-strength shots to everyone aged 12 and above, but parents and pediatricians alike have been waiting for vaccines for younger kids in order to stem infection and to keep kids in school. It would also help in keeping them out of quarantine and protect them from the ever-contagious Delta variant. According to experts, the dosage that would be given to the kids belonging to the 5-11 age group would be one-third of the vaccine dose that’s administered to adults.

Currently, Israel is experiencing a decline in serious cases of the coronavirus and the number of new cases detected, which indicates that the fourth wave of COVID-19 is ending in the country. On Friday, the Health Ministry figures showed that only 651 positive cases were diagnosed on Thursday, which meant a 0.92% positivity rate. The number of active cases on the country stood at 9,354 and patients in hospitals were around 325. These included 133 people on ventilators and 227 people in serious condition. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the death toll in Israel has surpassed the 8,000 mark and now stands at 8,081.