KIDS GOING ABROAD TO GET VAXXED
EXCLUSIVE
DESPERATE parents are taking primaryaged kids abroad for Covid jabs, fearing Omicron will rip through schools.
Only vulnerable five to 11-year-olds can get the vaccine in the UK at present, unlike in the US and most of Europe.
Public health professional Alice Chapman-hatchett, 44, drove her nineyear-old daughter almost 800 miles from Maidstone, Kent, to Milan in Italy last month to get her vaccinated.
Alice said: “I don’t want to be in the position where my daughter has neurological problems, or heart and lung issues, at 20 and says, ‘Why didn’t you do everything you could to protect me?’”
Chris Salt, 41, and wife Glad, 43, from Essex, are thinking of taking kids Chloe, seven, and Luke, five, to France after researching jabs. He said: “It’s something we’re absolutely considering.”
Dangerous
And one mum spent £2,500 on two trips to California to get her severely asthmatic son, seven, double-jabbed.
She said: “It was money well spent. I’ve since been told he wouldn’t qualify in the UK under the new rules as he hasn’t been in hospital for two years.”
Experts fear Omicron is more dangerous for children and warn of chaos as schools return this week.
Scientists say more than a million kids could be infected with the new Covid variant this term – with potentially devastating consequences.
More than 500 Covid-positive children were hospitalised this week, with a record 102 admitted on Monday.
No clinically vulnerable primary kids have been jabbed yet – despite millions of healthy adults getting a booster over the festive season. The majority of 12 to 15-year-olds have not had their first dose and only 2.3% of this age group are fully vaccinated.
Professor Christina Pagel, from the Clinical Operational Research unit at University College London, said: “It’s going to be really bad.
“Once community infection rates are high, infections get into schools and then they transmit really quickly.”
■ Nearly nine million Brits, who have spent an average £1,840, face cancelling US and European holidays due to the Omicron variant, research shows.