‘Children’s jabs are morally wrong’

IT is “morally wrong” to offer Covid19 jabs to children in wealthy countries when high-risk groups in poorer nations remain unvaccinated, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group has said.

Professor Andrew Pollard, who helped develop the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab, said global vaccine inequity was “plain to see”.

His comments come as it emerged that the UK has secured enough vaccine to offer the Pfizer jab for use in children aged 12 and older if it is clinically approved.

But Prof Pollard said that children had a “near-to-zero” risk of severe disease or death from Covid-19.

And the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that some countries were only just beginning to vaccinate those at highest risk from Covid-19.

Prof Pollard told the All Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus: “When you look at the overall aim of a global vaccination programme in a pandemic, it’s to stop people dying. And we know who those people are – that’s the over-50s, it’s those who’ve got health conditions and to some extent also healthcare workers and so those are the priority groups.

“We are in a situation at the moment where there are many unvaccinated people in the world but not enough doses for everyone yet. But there are many unvaccinated people in the world, whilst people whose risk is extremely low are being vaccinated, including children, who have near-to-zero the risk of severe disease or death.

“That inequity is absolutely plain to see at this moment in a very troubling way as we see the images from South Asia on our televisions.”