CHILDREN MAY GET JABBED IN AUGUST

There is a lot of discussion about school-age children getting vaccinated. Here’s the latest…

Afinal decision on whether to vaccinate kids hasn’t yet been made, but if it’s shown to be safe, they could have their jabs in August. No jab will be given until we have strong proof it’s safe and doesn’t give kids nasty side effects. In Israel, older children with underlying conditions that make them vulnerable to the virus are included in the vaccination programme, and around 600 children aged between 12 and 16 have been given the Pfizer jab, with no serious side effects. The head of Israel’s vaccine taskforce said, “We didn’t see any major side effects, and even minor [ones] are quite rare.”

There are also trials underway to test the Pfizer, Moderna and OxfordAstraZeneca vaccines in children. Pfizer has enrolled more than 2,000 children aged 12-15 for a trial and it expects to run a second one in children aged 5-11 years. In December, Moderna announced that it would be testing its vaccine in 3,000 youngsters aged

12-17, while the Oxford team has been testing its jab on hundreds of 16 and 17 year old volunteers since February.

In the US, it’s expected that high-school students should get a vaccine in the autumn, too. You may wonder why, but experts have said that while children very rarely become severely ill, vaccinating them alongside adults should help to suppress the transmission of the virus as much as possible and stop it spreading, as well as keeping dangerous new variants away. It’s unlikely that children under five will be vaccinated.