Ministry of Health clarifies details about the supply of dengue vaccines to RS

Technicians from the State Health Surveillance Center (Cevs) participated this Monday morning (29/4) in a meeting with representatives of the National Immunization Program (PNI) to plan the vaccination action against dengue in the municipalities covered in Rio Grande southern.

It was also clarified by the Ministry of Health (MS) that the vaccines will be sent in a staggered manner. The number of doses in the first shipment, out of a total of 126 thousand, has yet to be made official, but its delivery to the Department of Health (SES) should take place on Tuesday (30/4).

The MS’s definition of cities and priority audiences for vaccination will be maintained: children and adolescents between 10 and 14 years old. According to the Technical Note released on Thursday (26/4), six cities will receive the vaccines: Porto Alegre, Viamão, Alvorada, Gravataí, Cachoeirinha and Glorinha.

At the meeting, MS representatives explained that the criteria for defining the municipalities took into account the history of dengue cases between 2013 and 2022, as the strategy was defined before the end of last year. The 126 thousand doses represent the estimated population, in the six municipalities, that belong to defined age range.

The note informs the following: “Considering the continental dimensions of Brazil, the heterogeneity of transmission in each region, and the limited number of vaccine doses available for 2024, large municipalities were selected (population greater than or equal to 100 thousand inhabitants) with high dengue transmission in the last ten years, including the other municipalities in its coverage health regions, regardless of population size, ordered by the predominance of the DENV-2 serotype (recent reemergence) and the highest number of cases in the 2023/2024 monitoring (Epidemiological Week 27 of 2023 Until Week 2 of 2024)”.

Based on these criteria, the city of Glorinha ended up being included. Even with a population below 100 thousand inhabitants, it was selected because it is part of the same health region as other municipalities with a higher population and with a higher incidence of dengue in the period. The ranking of the municipalities, however, was not released to the States by the MS.

Availability of vaccines

The first doses of the vaccine (whose commercial name is Qdenga, from the Japanese manufacturer Takeda Pharma) are expected to arrive on Tuesday (4/30). They will then be made available for collection from municipalities at the State Center for Storage and Distribution of Immunobiologicals (Ceadi).

The entire amount will be used to apply the first dose to the priority population. The amount that will be sent for the second dose of the vaccination schedule, applied after three months, will depend on the number of first doses registered in the PNI system.

Priority group

According to the MS definition, children and adolescents between 10 and 14 years old will be vaccinated, the age group that has the highest number of hospitalizations due to dengue nationally in recent years: 16,400 from January 2019 to November 2023.

The Japanese manufacturer’s vaccine is not authorized by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) for people over 60 years of age, the population that has the highest number of deaths in RS.

_{Text: Ascom SES
Edition: Secom}