<Anchor> In the
United States, emergency approval of a coronavirus vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 is imminent. Vaccination of children may play a crucial role in ending the delta pandemic, health experts say.
Correspondent Yunsu Kim from Washington.
<Reporter> In the
United States, after the spread of the delta mutation, the number of children patients increased significantly.
After the fourth pandemic that began last summer, the incidence rate per 100,000 people under the age of 18 began to exceed that of adults.
This is because, unlike the alpha mutation that led the early pandemic, the delta mutation is contagious at any age.
[Pouch/Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: During the delta pandemic, children are easily infected like adults and transmit the disease to others similarly to adults.] In
particular, 50% of children's patients are asymptomatic, so it is
difficult
to prevent the spread. Even more difficult, US health experts believe that vaccinating 28 million children between the ages of 5 and 11 will be crucial to ending the delta pandemic.
The emergency use authorization for children's COVID-19 vaccine is expected to drop early next month, but US health officials plan to have as many children vaccinated as possible by Christmas.
[Jeff Giants / White House Corona Coordinator: 25,000 pediatric and family medicine departments and primary care institutions have registered for child vaccination.]
US health officials say another mutation found in the UK, delta plus, is also often found in the US, but shows no signs of a large-scale spread.