Rabat – Saad Eddine El Othmani, Morocco’s Head of Government, has urged parents to vaccinate their children amid reports of a surge in critical COVID infections among children.
El Othmani made the comments in a video statement posted on his social media pages, painting a grim picture of the COVID situation among children in the past few weeks.
The Moroccan Head of Government’s call comes as the country ramps up its vaccination efforts. Earlier this week, the ministry of health announced that the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination campaign will be extended to children aged 12 to 17.
This comes as part of the country’s attempts to fight the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant ahead of the 2021-2022 school year, scheduled to start on September 13.
In his video statement, El Othmani drew attention to worrying figures about the virus, especially in regard to a spike of serious cases among children and young adults.
Since the pandemic hit Morocco in March of last year, a total of 256 children have been admitted to intensive care units, El Othmani explained. Of these cases of serious infections among children, he stressed, health authorities registered 117 this month alone.
In addition, he revealed that 19 children have died of the virus since the start of the spread, and 7 of these deaths were recorded in the course of this month.
While stating that the vaccination campaign would remain completely optional and voluntary, El Othmani suggested he felt a moral and political responsibility to urge citizens to get vaccinated.
The committee running Morocco’s vaccination campaign has announced its decision to use the Sinopharm and Pfizer vaccines for the 12-17 year old age group.
According to the committee, the two vaccines have been demonstrated worldwide to be the most effective among younger populations. Like El Othmani, the committee conceded that vaccination will remain optional, and that children and minors will only be administered doses with the approval of the recipient’s guardian.
At the time of writing, more than 14 million people across Morocco have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest official figures.
