VACC TO SCHOOL
1.4m TEENS TO GET THE FIRST PFIZER JAB AS SOON AS POSSIBLE 16 & 17-YEAR-OLDS WILL NOT NEED ANY PARENTAL CONSENT
ALL young people aged 16 and 17 in the UK are to be offered first doses of the Covid vaccine before they go back to school.
The 1.4million teenagers will get the Pfizer/ BioNTech jab – and can have it without their parents’ consent, the government said.
Prof Jonathan Van-Tam (pictured) said the rollout would start by the end of the summer holidays, be completed by Christmas and may even be extended for 12- to 15-year-olds later.
The deputy chief medical officer said: ‘Children will be going back to colleges from September so there’s no time to waste in getting on with this.’
The announcement came as Britain’s Covid death toll hit 130,000 – but medics insisted the move was meant to stop young people suffering rather than avoiding them spreading the virus.
And one scientist claimed the vaccines should be sent abroad. Prof David Livermore, of the University of East Anglia, said teens were ‘at low risk of serious disease and, through exposure, are developing immunity anyway. Limited
vaccine supplies would be far better used in countries and regions with large vulnerable elderly populations who presently remain unvaccinated – Australia, much of south-east Asia and Latin America, as well as Africa’.
The change came after the Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation said it was reassured by more data on the risk of rare side effects in the young.
Teens will get the Pfizer jab after concerns earlier this year that the alternative Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was linked to blood clots in younger people.
Father-of-three Prof Van-Tam insisted: ‘I would be very much in favour if they were 16 or 17 for them to be vaccinated with that first dose.’
JCVI chief Prof Wei Shen Lim said the move was to help teens rather than stop them infecting older people, insisting: ‘At the forefront is the benefit to children and young people themselves.’
He added they would not be under pressure to have a jab but feedback suggested teenagers wanted the choice.
Covid was on just 44 death certificates of under 18s in the UK but nearly one in 50 children suffer symptoms for more than eight weeks, King’s College London reported yesterday.
A record 1.3million children were sent home from school because of Covid alerts at the end of last term but nearly 60 per cent of those aged 16 and 17 now have antibodies, the Office for
National Statistics revealed. Some 4.3million 18- to 30-year-olds have still not had their first dose and Prof Lim, who works at a hospital in Nottingham, said: ‘We are now seeing young people being admitted to hospital with quite severe Covid. Much of that suffering can be prevented.’ The televised Downing Street press conference was the first that journalists were allowed to attend in person for months.
Prof Van-Tam told them the rollout was ‘not likely to be early next week but the NHS has been preparing for multiple options and I would expect this programme will start in a very short number of weeks indeed’.
The programme was first mooted by ministers in June but none of them was at the briefing to explain the delay, and there was no indication when jabbed teens would get second doses.
France is already vaccinating all over 12s with Spain due to follow this month, and Prof Van-Tam said the JCVI had been asked to review data on those aged 12 to 15. ‘It is more likely than less likely that the list will broaden over time as data becomes available,’ he added.
Shadow education minister Peter Kyle criticised the timing of the campaign, calling it ‘too late to make a difference... when terms starts next month’. He added: ‘Government has squandered the opportunity summer offered.’
And teachers instantly distanced themselves from health secretary Sajid Javid’s suggestion of a rollout through schools. Paul Whiteman, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: ‘Schools should not carry any responsibility for vaccination promotion, enforcement or policing.’
Daily deaths fell to 119 yesterday with hospitalisations in England under 5,000 for the first time since July 25.
INDIA, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are off England’s red list in the traffic light system for travel, meaning travellers arriving from those countries will not need to go into a quarantine hotel. Spain has avoided the red status but travellers are urged to take a PCR test before flying home. Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Romania and Norway are also added to the quarantine-free green list and, as expected, arrivals from France will no longer need to self-isolate. The changes come in at 4am on Sunday.