The UK has not agreed any plans to vaccinate children against Covid and will only do it ‘if necessary’, a government adviser said today.
Professor Adam Finn, a child vaccination expert at Bristol University and member of the JCVI advisory group, said today that ‘no decisions have been made’.
Leaked government plans last night suggested that ministers want to start getting jabs to millions of under-18s from August to try and achieve herd immunity in the UK.
But results from clinical trials involving children haven’t been released yet, and the effectiveness and side effects of the jabs when given to youngsters are unknown.
AstraZeneca and Pfizer are both testing their vaccines on under-18s and expect to announce their findings by the summer.
Scientists say that giving Covid jabs to children is morally complicated because they have almost zero short-term risk from the disease, and would only be vaccinated to protect old people. It’s still unknown, however, how long Covid might affect them.
More than 28million adults in the UK have had their first vaccine dose so far and the NHS will aim to reach all over-18s by the end of July.
Professor Adam Finn, a member of government advisory group the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said he was not aware of any ‘final decisions’ being made on plans to vaccinate children against Covid
Vaccinating children could be controversial because it is likely to be focused on protecting older people rather than the children themselves. Other vaccines given to children, such as for measles and meningitis, protect against diseases that are very dangerous and potentially deadly to children, but the same is not true of Covid-19 (stock image)
Professor Finn said on Good Morning Britain: ‘If it does turn out to be necessary to immunise children, I think it is more likely that we would prioritise teenagers over younger children, simply because the evidence we have at the moment is that transmission of the virus is more likely to occur from and between teenagers who are a little bit more like adults.
‘I think what we need to learn before that, what proportion of the population we need to immunise in order to get effective herd immunity and to suppress circulation of the virus.
‘In order to do that we need to have a clear understanding of how efficiently the vaccines actually interrupt infection and transmission and that evidence is still on its way at the moment.’
The UK will try to achieve herd immunity – in which so many people are protected that the virus can’t spread – with the Covid vaccines.
But if the threshold of protection needed is high, children may need vaccinating too otherwise the virus will continue spreading among them.
Although most won’t get sick, the long-term effects of the virus aren’t well understood, and more cases means a higher risk that some will get seriously ill or that the virus will make its way into adults for whom the jab hasn’t worked.
Even vaccinating all adults wouldn’t offer total protection because the jabs don’t stop 100 per cent of Covid cases.
Professor Finn told The Telegraph: ‘Children constitute close to quarter of the population, so even if we could achieve 100 per cent uptake of vaccines across the adult population, it only gets you to 75 per cent coverage.’
But denied this morning that there were plans in motion to vaccinate children.
He told GMB: ‘As far as I know there has been no decision made to immunise children starting in August, or indeed any decision been taken to immunise children at all at this point.
‘But it’s certainly something that we might need to do.’
He added: ‘We clearly won’t want to do that unless it’s necessary.’
A plan leaked to The Telegraph has suggested that up to 11million under-18s could get jabs by the start of the autumn term, months ahead of schedule.
Whether this goes ahead will depend on the results of ongoing clinical trials of the vaccines.
All the main suppliers to the UK – Pfizer and BioNTech; Oxford University and AstraZeneca; and Moderna are carrying out trials now to see if the vaccines work on youngsters.
Oxford is testing its jab on 300 six to 17-year-olds in England and results are expected by the summer.
Pfizer and BioNTech have enrolled 2,259 12- to 15-year-olds in a trial of their vaccine, and plan to do the same tests on five- to 11-year-olds later in 2021.
And Moderna announced this month that it was testing its vaccine on 6,750 children aged from six months to 11 in the US and Canada as well as a separate trial on 12- to 17-year-olds. These results are also expected later in the year.
Vaccination figures show another 329,897 first doses were administered on Monday, taking the total to 28.3million. And a further 82,300 second doses were dished out
Department of Health bosses announced 5,379 infections, which was up 1.6 per cent from last Tuesday
Another 112 victims were also added to the official toll, a week on-week rise of 1.8 per cent. The overall trend for deaths is, however, still heading downwards
Vaccinating children could be controversial because it is likely to be focused on protecting older people rather than the children themselves.
Other vaccines given to children, such as for measles and meningitis, protect against diseases that are very dangerous and potentially deadly to children, but the same is not true of Covid-19.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) show the risk of dying from Covid if infected is 1,513 per 100,000 people for over-80s, but for children aged five to nine, this is just 0.1 per 100,000.
People who back the child vaccination policy argue that it is important to minimise the risk of infection, despite some academics arguing children do not contribute to the spread of Covid.
Israel is the first country in the world to have rolled out vaccines to under-18s, with 16 and 17-year-olds having jabs after the health ministry decided it was safe.
If the proposal to jab children goes ahead, this would mean 11million could be vaccinated before the start of the autumn term.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said ‘no decisions have been made on whether children should be offered vaccinations.’
One source involved in the plan told The Telegraph that vaccines for children ‘could begin by late summer,’ stating specifically that August was the date.
Another source said that this would be the ‘earliest’ the roll-out for under-18s would begin.
Only children who are at a high risk of Covid are currently able to have a vaccine.
The proposal to vaccinate children underlines the extent to which the government feels it must drive down cases ahead of next winter.
Boris Johnson on Tuesday conceded at the Downing Street press briefing that eradicating Covid wasn’t on the table.
‘I’m not sure that eradication makes sense in a globalised economy for one country alone,’ the PM said.
Mr Johnson struck a sombre tone on Tuesday as Britain remembered its 126,000 covid dead on the first anniversary of lockdown.
He offered his ‘sincere condolences to those who have lost loved ones’ as he reflected on a ‘a very dark and difficult year.’
But he has warned recently of another wave ‘washing up on our shores’ amid rising cases in Europe and said on Tuesday it was ‘too early to say’ whether overseas holidays would be possible.
One way in which they might be feasible is through vaccinations, and in more inoculation news, it was revealed in a leak dossier yesterday that care home workers will be made to have the jab.
Mr Johnson and Matt Hancock are believed to have pushed for the move amid alarm over the low take-up of jabs among care home staff.
Figures show that only around a quarter of care homes in London and around half in other parts of England have reached ‘safe’ levels of vaccination of staff.
A paper was submitted to the Covid-19 Operations Cabinet sub- committee last week to make jabs compulsory for care home staff, according to the Daily Telegraph.
If the measures are voted through then England’s 1.5 million workers in social care could become legally required to get a coronavirus jab.
It presents a major departure from the government’s previous insistence the jab would not be made mandatory.
It is also expected to raise anger among staff, with the paper itself warning that the policy could trigger an exodus of staff and even a string of human rights lawsuits.
The paper was drafted by the Department of Health and Social Care and is titled ‘Vaccination as a condition of deployment in adult social care and health setting’.
The key section for care workers reads: ‘The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State [for Health] have discussed on several occasions the progress that is being made to vaccinate social care workers against Covid-19 and have agreed – in order to reach a position of much greater safety for care recipients – to put in place legislation to require vaccinations among the workforce.’
The paper also revealed how the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), set a benchmark of 80 per cent vaccination among staff and 90 per cent vaccination among residents for a care home to be deemed safe.
However, even in the best performing areas, only around half of homes have done so.
The issue of care home workers not getting the jab has been a long-running one.
In December, Nadra Ahmed, chairman of the National Care Association, said as many as 40% of carers could choose not to get the vaccine.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that as many as 200,000 NHS and care employees have refused the offer of a jab so far, despite working in close proximity to the vulnerable.
‘It is extraordinary that so many people in the health sector appear to have turned down the vaccine,’ a Cabinet source told the Mail.
‘It seems incredible that anyone working in that environment could give any credence to the rubbish put out by the anti-vaxxers. But we do need to get those people vaccinated.’
Britain’s vaccine roll-out has offered a light at the end of the tunnel, with nearly 28 million first doses administered to date.
