On December 8th, a Costa Rican appeals court ordered the suspension of the mandatory vaccination against Covid-19 for children under 12 years of age. Costa Rica was the only country in the world that forced parents to vaccinate the entire population against Covid-19, including those under 18 years of age.
It was the lawyer Arcelio Hernández Mussio who argued that the government’s decision to make the pediatric vaccine mandatory for children under 12 years of age had been premature because it only had an emergency use authorization granted by the FDA on August 23rd, 2021.
On suspension
“The measure, the injunction will remain in force until the claim is finally resolved. With the lawsuit, the effects of Executive Decree No. 43364 of December 13th, 2021 are suspended, only in the mandatory nature of vaccination for the pediatric population (up to twelve years of age), as long as there is no final judgment ”, says the sentence on the file 22-3203-1027-CA.
12 to 17 age group
However, still for children from 12 to 17 vaccination remains mandatory. According to Hernández, the parents of children between the ages of 12 and 17 who are included in a new contentious lawsuit against the obligation with arguments specifically for that age range. “In this demand for knowledge (ordinary) we are also going to request a precautionary measure,” concluded Hernández. To file this appeal, Hernández is collecting signatures.
Spending on Pfizer vaccines was prior to receiving emergency permission
As announced by the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS), at the end of last November 11th, vaccines for children expired. Despite the fact that both the CCSS and the Ministry of Health assure that they did everything possible to spend the vaccines without letting them expire through a series of activities, such as the extension of office hours, house-to-house and school visits, campaigns and alliances public-private. However, many adults do not want to get vaccinated, let alone vaccinate their children, since they are aware of what Pfizer itself revealed in February of this year, that Covid vaccines for children only had 12% efficacy in children aged 5 to 11 years.
The Alvarado Quesada government not only bought vaccines before receiving the emergency use permit from the US FDA, but also bought more than was due. On October 25th, 2022, the President of the Republic, Carlos Alvarado, announced through his Twitter account that he signed a contract to buy 1.5 million doses to vaccinate children between the ages of 5 and 11 in 2022. This was three days before the FDA approved the emergency use of this vaccine for this population. The government spent more than US$15 million on these pediatric vaccines alone, with less than a dozen children under 12 years of age dying in Costa Rica with Covid-19, and these minors were also carrying other serious diseases.
