Italy begins to apply the policy "No vaccines, no school" after the expiration of the deadline

Italian schools have begun to refuse mandatory vaccinations after the expiration of a temporary waiver, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. At least 300 children said that they could not go to kindergarten in Bologna this week.

According to the Times, a 2017 law requires children enrolled in Italian schools to receive 10 different vaccines, "in response to a worrying drop in the number of vaccinations in the country and a measles outbreak the same year". However, last year, the Ministry of Health, led by a member of the Five Star Movement political party, including the co-founder, reported conspiracy theories linking immunization to autism. published a temporary rule allowing parents to simply declare that children had been vaccinated instead of receiving a note from a doctor. This derogation has been strongly criticized by the scientific and medical community, which said it could reverse the progress made in increasing vaccination rates in Italy in recent years.

"Measles immunization coverage in Italy was comparable to that of Namibia, lower than in Ghana," CNN professor Roberto Burioni told CNN last year of the professor of microbiology and virology at San Raffaele University in Milan. "But the law worked, the blanket improved. We should strengthen it, not weaken it. "

However, this waiver expired on March 10, which means that the provisions of the law banning attendance of nursery schools by unvaccinated children and providing fines for parents who refuse to vaccinate their older children are now in effect:

Children can only go to nursery school if they are vaccinated. Parents of primary and secondary school children are fined up to 500 euros if they do not have doctor's notes that their children have been vaccinated against the required diseases.

In Bologna, officials said that the 300 children had not presented the official document attesting to their vaccination on Monday and could not go to public crèches.

"Now everyone has had time to catch up," Health Minister Giulia Grillo told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the BBC reported. "… no vaccine, no school."

According to the BBC, the 10 vaccines include those that immunize against chicken pox, polio, measles, mumps and rubella. Officials in Bologna said that some 5,000 children in the city do not have the appropriate documents certifying that they have been vaccinated. The BBC added that the Italian media reported that regional authorities "handled the situation in different ways", with no notice of suspension being reported in some areas and no grace period allowed in others.

The BBC wrote that the law had been passed to boost Italian vaccination rates, which is partly due to the growing movement of anti-vaccination activists (widely known as anti-xaxisers). These people believe that vaccines are dangerous and, depending on the misinformation they have absorbed, can cause everything from autism and attention deficit disorder to "vaccine overload," a condition invented that is not a real medical term. Researchers have regularly discredited such conspiracy theories and have no scientific support, even though the number of people who believe in it has become important enough for the World Health Organization (WHO) to have classified the movement among the top 10 threats to public health in 2019..

"Italy is part of a global trend of mistrust of mediators – doctors and scientists – who can interpret and explain data," Andrea Grignolio, professor of bioethics and psychology, told CNN. history of medicine at the University Rome Rome. people have the illusion of being able to access and read the data on their own, eliminating the need for technical and scientific knowledge. "

According to the Times, the current Italian government is working on a confusing plan to introduce a "flexible bond", in which vaccination would only be mandatory if the rates fell below the herd's immunity level. This is the point at which so many people have been vaccinated against a particular disease that those who have given up their vaccine will still have little chance of contracting it, but it is difficult to see what a "flexible" system is beyond the preservation of opt-outs for anti-variators.

While vaccination rates hovered around 80% in 2017, when the law was passed, the Times adds, the country is getting closer (and has already reached some areas) the WHO target set to 95%.

[New York Times/BBC]