Action against vaccination of children and adolescents is not recent and was overturned by the courts in 2022

The RedeTV report is old! News reporting that a prosecutor filed a lawsuit to prevent the mandatory vaccination of children and adolescents against Covid-19. The case was sent to the Federal Court in February 2022 and dismissed two months later. The action made a series of misleading claims about the immunizers, such as that their use had been approved in Brazil before the completion of phase 3 of clinical trials.

The decontextualized video had accumulated more than 6,300 shares on Facebook and thousands of views on Kwai and TikTok as of this Wednesday afternoon (8).

Publications on the networks deceive by sharing as if it were recent a complaint made to the MPF (Federal Public Ministry) in Uberlândia (MG) last year about supposed adverse reactions, in children and adolescents, from vaccines against Covid-19. The report used by the disinformation pieces was broadcast in March 2022 on RedeTV! and talks about a case already archived by the courts.

At the time, prosecutor Cléber Eustáquio Neves requested that vaccination of young people no longer be mandatory and that authorities create a fund for “treatment and compensation” for those who experience adverse effects from immunization.

The case, however, was dismissed in April 2022. Federal judge José Carlos Machado Júnior, responsible for the case, considered in the sentence that “contrary to being considered likely to cause harm to the community, the implementation of vaccination for minors eighteen years against Covid-19, in the circumstances covered in the case, as established by the STF, constitutes an obligation of public entities, not constituting compensable conduct”.

Disinformation. The report shared by the misinformation pieces also contains excerpts from the prosecutor’s action with misleading claims about vaccines. The first is that Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) would have approved the Pfizer vaccine for children and adolescents before the end of phases 3 and 4 of clinical trials.

In reality, the agency only authorized application in young people after analyzing data from clinical trials on children aged 5 to 11 and adolescents aged 12 to 15. In September 2022, application in children aged 6 months to 4 years was also approved.

It is worth mentioning that, in general, medicines are made available after the third phase of testing. Phase 4, in fact, is monitoring carried out by pharmaceutical companies after the product is sold. At this stage, companies analyze, for example, interactions with other medicines and the occurrence of rare adverse reactions.

Another misleading information present in the video is that Pfizer had omitted the subsequent inclusion of the substance tromethamine in its immunizer aimed at young people and that the compound would be responsible for “preventing myocarditis in children”. Tromethamine has been included in the vaccine since its approval by Anvisa and only serves to increase the drug’s shelf life.

To the Facts contacted the MPF of Minas Gerais so that the prosecutor could comment on the check, but, until the publication of this text, there was no response.

O Estadão Verifica also debunked the misinformation piece.

References:

1. Look

2. Anvisa (1, 2 and 3)

3. Folha de S.Paulo

4. To the Facts

5. CAS