UK to offer Covid vaccines to 12 to 15-year-olds
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Covid-19 jabs will be offered to all children in the UK aged between 12 and 15 as early as next week, as concerns mount over a fresh wave of infections in schools in the autumn.
The UK’s four chief medical officers concluded that universal vaccination was necessary on mental health grounds and to avoid educational disruption. The vaccines will be offered to children through the school immunisation programme.
Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, and his counterparts in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales outlined their recommendation on Monday in a letter to the health secretaries of the four nations of the UK.
“The additional likely benefits of reducing educational disruption, and the consequent reduction in public health harm from educational disruption, on balance provide sufficient extra advantage in addition to the marginal advantage at an individual level identified by the [Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation] to recommend in favour of vaccinating this group,” said the letter.
The return of schools in England has already led to an uptick in cases among younger age groups. There were about 67,000 cases recorded among under-20s in the week ending on September 6, a 50 per cent increase on the previous week before schools returned.
In Scotland, where schools returned in mid-August, infections among children aged 14 and under peaked at about 1,400 cases per 100,000 in the week to September 6. As a result, daily cases in Scotland rose above 7,000 a day for the first time in the pandemic. Around 5 per cent of children in Scotland have been absent from school due to Covid-related reasons each day in September, government figures show.
First doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine have previously been available to 16 and 17-year-olds, alongside some children aged 12 to 15 who are clinically vulnerable or living with an immunosuppressed relative, after the UK’s vaccine advisory group stalled on inoculating healthy children over concerns about rare cases of severe heart inflammation.
As of September 5, nearly 140,000 under-16s in England had received at least one dose of a vaccine.
The JCVI, which advises the UK government, is yet to conclude whether children will be offered a second dose as most rare side effects have been shown to emerge after the second dose. In early September, the committee deferred the decision on first doses for children to the chief medical officers after concluding that the benefits of vaccination for the individual were too marginal.
“If ministers accept the advice, the medical officers will want the JCVI to give a view on second doses in this age cohort once more data has been accrued internationally,” the letter added. “This will not be before the spring term.”
But a JCVI member told the Financial Times their approval of second doses for adolescents was “by no means a certainty” and they may end up opting for a 12-week gap between the two doses.
The chief medical officers said ministers should engage experts from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Royal College of General Practitioners on how to approach the issue of consent from parents.
Additional reporting by John Burn-Murdoch