The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is to recommend against the vaccination of under-18s until there is more safety data, according to the Telegraph.
Experts on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) are expected to make a recommendation against the vaccination of under-18s in the immediate future.
The committee is understood to be preparing an “interim” statement for release as soon as the end of the week following a meeting on Tuesday.
At a meeting, members are understood to have voiced serious ethical concerns about vaccinating children, given that they rarely suffer serious illness from Covid.
The statement is set to say more time is needed to assess studies of vaccine rollouts in other countries where children are being vaccinated – including the US and Israel – before deciding whether such a programme should be launched in the U.K.
A Whitehall source said: “Nobody is going to green light the mass vaccination of children at this stage. Scientists want to see more data from the U.S. and elsewhere before taking a firm stand either way. Nobody is going to make a final decision at this point. The JCVI will want to weigh up the benefits against the risks before vaccinating children, and it wants more data.”
Under-18s very rarely suffer serious disease with COVID-19 and younger people are also affected more strongly by some of the rare-but-serious vaccine side-effects such as blood clots, meaning the risk-benefit calculation is less likely to be favourable. With data on children, who were not included in the trials, very sparse, this is the right advice. Let’s hope the Government follows it.
The Telegraph report is worth reading in full.
