Cuba begins vaccinating children as young as 2

Sitting on her mother’s lap, 2-year-old Lucía looked at the illustrations in her book while around her several children watched the doctors in white coats and nurses with thermometers in amazement

HAVANA -- Sitting on her mother’s lap, 2-year-old Lucía looked at the illustrations in her book while around her several children watched the doctors in white coats and nurses with thermometers in amazement. In an adjoining room, Danielito, also 2, sniffled while getting a shot as a clown tried to distract him.

Cuba on Thursday began a massive vaccination campaign for children between the ages of 2 and 10, becoming one of the first nations to do so. Health officials here say Cuba’s homegrown vaccines have been found safe to give to young children.

“Our country would not put (infants) even at a minimal risk if the vaccines were not proven save and highly effective when put into children,” Aurolis Otaño, director of the Vedado Polyclinic University, told The Associated Press in a vaccination room.

Otaño said the circulation of the Delta variant produced an increase in infections among the youngest, so Cuba’s scientific community decided to “take the vaccine to clinical trial” and it was approved for children.