GIVE THE VACCINE TO CHILDREN AGED 12-15
The UK’s four chief medical officers agree jags will help prevent education disruption
MORE than three million children aged 12 to 15 will be eligible for Covid-19 jabs, medical experts have decided.
The UK’s four chief medical officers yesterday gave the green light to vaccinating younger teenagers in an attempt to prevent more disruption to education.
Pupils across the UK will be offered a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine but it will not be compulsory for schoolchildren to take the jab.
But Chris Whitty, chief medical adviser to the UK Government, issued a stark warning that he still expected there to be pressure on the NHS and disruption to classrooms because of coronavirus.
Whitty said vaccination “will reduce education disruption” but “we do not think this is a panacea, it is not a silver bullet”.
He added: “We think it is an important and potentially useful additional tool to help reduce the public health impacts that come through educational disruption.”
The four chief medical officers held a press conference to outline details of the approach.
The CMOs were asked to assess the benefit of vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds, including the impact the pandemic has had on education after the scientific advice was inconclusive.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the margin of benefit from vaccinating healthy children was too small to say they should receive a jab. But the chief medical officers decided that a single dose would be enough to prevent the disruption to education and a repeat of mass school closures as seen last year. Whitty said the single jab would reduce the chances of vaccinated children getting infected by 50 per cent. He said it would also reduce the chances of them passing it on but warned it would not eliminate school closures entirely. The professor said the senior doctors were not saying children “must” get the jab but there were benefits to them doing so. He said: “What we are not trying to do is say to children, ‘You must, must, must, must, must’, but what we are saying is we think – on balance – the benefits both at an individual level and in terms of wider indirect benefits to education and, through that, to public health, are in favour.
“Otherwise we would not be making this recommendation.”
Whitty told a Downing Street press conference: “Our view, which is a view of the great majority of doctors and public health professionals, is that these two are not in conflict.
“What JCVI has said is there is a marginal advantage but by their assessment that was not sufficient by their ordinary standards to recommend it and quite appropriately, they’ve kept to their independent view.
“They suggested further things and what we’ve done is we’ve added in some wider considerations as the JCVI has suggested. We do not see a conflict between these.”
Dr Gregor Smith, the chief medical officer for Scotland, stressed the recommendation is based on what is best for 12 to 15-year-olds.
He said parents and children needed to understand that although the benefit was “marginal”, it was still better to have the jab.
Smith said: “Informed consent in this context is really important, particularly when there is a marginal benefit.
“We should not mistake that marginal benefit for no benefit at all, that’s the first really important point in this.”
Meanwhile, the scientist whose modelling was instrumental to the UK going into its first lockdown said levels of immunity in the United Kingdom were falling behind some European countries that had inoculated teenagers faster.
Professor Neil Ferguson said the UK had been leading in Europe on vaccination until recently but other countries, such as Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Ireland “have got higher vaccination levels than us and that’s largely because they have rolled out vaccination of 12 to 15-year-olds faster than us”.
He said: “They also vaccinated more recently and we know now that vaccine effectiveness decays over time.
“We always expected that and so they have more immunity in the population.”
We should not mistake that marginal benefit for no benefit at all DR GREGOR SMITH ON JAB FOR YOUNG TEENAGERS