After months and months of recommending lockdown policies that damaged the mental health, education and social development of young people, Chris Whitty is now set to recommend that children aged 12 and over should be vaccinated against Covid “to benefit their mental health, education and social development”, according to the Times.
The Chief Medical Officer for England is set to conclude a review of medical evidence early next week, with ministers promising that the first younger teenagers will be jabbed within five working days. …
Whitty and his counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are finalising a review into the wider benefits of child vaccination after the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation gave them responsibility for making a decision. [Or, rather, after the Government chose to ignore the JCVI.]
The committee concluded last week that although the benefits of vaccinating healthy children aged 12 to 15 slightly outweighed the risk, the balance in favour was too small to justify mass immunisation on health grounds alone. They said Whitty should be tasked with considering the broader benefits to children and his review has been holding discussions this week.
The Times understands that talks with senior doctors and other experts reached the conclusion that vaccination should go ahead.
The desire to stop children taking time off school sick, and to help them avoid worrying about the pandemic and learning to get on with their peer group were together judged to tip the balance in favour of vaccination.
Sources close to Whitty stressed that he was still holding discussions and was yet to finalise his recommendations, but the backing of his top advisers means that vaccination of children is in effect agreed.
Worth reading in full.
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