London –
An expert scientific committee advising the British government said on Tuesday for the first time that children should be vaccinated with the chickenpox vaccine, decades after it became widely available in other countries including the United States, Canada and Australia. Recommended.
In the UK, people who want to be vaccinated against the disease must pay around £150 (US$184).
The UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization said in a statement that children aged one to 18 months should receive two doses of the vaccine, which also protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
“For some infants, young children and even adults, chickenpox and its complications can be very serious and lead to hospitalization and death,” Andrew Pollard, chair of the Vaccine Expert Group, said in a statement. Ta.
Pollard said “decades of evidence” of the effectiveness of vaccines from other countries proves the vaccines are safe. The United States was the first country to introduce a varicella vaccination program in her 1995.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has described chickenpox cases in the country as “rare,” estimating fewer than 150,000 cases and fewer than 30 deaths each year.
British experts previously estimated there were more than 650,000 people infected with chickenpox in England and Wales.
Chickenpox is a highly contagious disease that primarily affects children and can cause an itchy rash, blisters, and fever. Symptoms usually last about a week, but in rare cases, the virus can cause pneumonia, encephalitis, and even death. Her two doses of the vaccine will give her more than 90% protection against the disease.
Recommendations for the chickenpox vaccine will be considered next by the government.
Britain’s National Health Service has warned that with the introduction of the varicella vaccine, some adults may be more susceptible to shingles if they become infected with shingles as adults, and that unvaccinated children may become more susceptible to shingles than chickenpox. We have long said that it could be serious.
But experts pointed out that the British government is offering the shingles vaccine to adults at risk of shingles.
Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam, deputy director of public health programs at the UK Health and Safety Executive, said the new varicella vaccine recommendation would “help make chickenpox a problem of the past”.
