The UK Expands Vaccination Program to Offer Vaccines to 12-15 year-olds

The covid-19 vaccination program in the U.K. has so far been successful, with over 48 million people, 89 percent of over-16s in the country, already having received their first dose. However, now that schools have returned from the summer holidays, one of the main worries is that young people’s exposure to the virus will cause another spike in cases. 16- and 17-year-olds are already in the process of being offered their first dose of the vaccine, but the government has gone a step further and decided to offer the jab to all children aged twelve or over. 

Children within this age group who have serious underlying health conditions that could be worsened by the virus or who live with people who do have already been offered their first dose. Starting next week, and continuing through the next few months, the healthy members of the group will also be offered it. The vaccine selected for this is the Pfizer BioNTech covid-19 vaccine, and they will only be given one dose, as opposed to two for the rest of the eligible population. Parents will be asked to give permission for their child to receive the vaccination, but if the parent and child are of differing views and the child is considered to be competent enough, the child will make the final decision. 

The U.K. government did not take this decision lightly and took recommendations and advice from many different people, including medical professionals, teachers, medical advisers, parents, and government ministers. The Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) was the first to produce published advice on the matter in the form of an independent report entitled JCVI Statement on Covid-19 Vaccination of Children Aged 12 to 15 Years: Sept. 3, 2021. They stated that “overall, the committee is of the opinion that the benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms,” but “the margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal program of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12 to 15-year-old children.” Therefore, they suggested that the government should “seek further views on the wider societal and educational impacts from the chief medical officers of the 4 nations”, as the disruption to education may warrant a country-wide school-enforced program. In response to this the Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) of the U.K. wrote a letter to the Health Ministers of the four U.K. nations, saying “evidence from clinical and public health colleagues, general practice, child health, and mental health consistently makes clear the massive impact that absent, or disrupted, face-to-face education has had on the welfare and mental health of many children and young people” and that their overall view “is that the additional likely benefits of reducing educational disruption, and the consequent reduction in public health harm from educational disruption, on balance provide sufficient extra advantage in addition to the marginal advantage at an individual level identified by the JCVI to recommend in favor of vaccinating this group.”

Chris Witty, Chief Medical Officer for England, was among the four CMOs to sign the letter | Leon Neal.

As has been a theme throughout the pandemic, there has been backlash from parents and members of the public about this decision, with some school staff members even being threatened with legal action. Despite the vaccine having gone through the same testing and approval procedures as any other vaccination or drug used in the U.K., there has been a worryingly high amount of anti-vax messages distributed since the start of the pandemic. This has mainly been due to certain groups’ reliance and faith in social media to get their ‘news.’ Unfortunately, this has led to a lot of fabricated stories circulating, which has been a nuisance to the vaccine rollout program. In reality, most of the claims about covid-19 vaccines on social media are not trustworthy at all; a study conducted by Islam et al in 2020 showed that only 5 percent of online claims about covid-19 vaccinations were true, 10 percent were misleading, 2 percent were exaggerated, and 83 percent were outright lies. Understandably, parents might be uncertain about their children being given a relatively new vaccination, but their fears are completely unfounded. There is no evidence of covid vaccines causing infertility or stunting children’s growth, and certainly no evidence of Bill Gates’ alleged microchip. So far in the U.K., 1,632 people have died shortly after receiving a covid-19 vaccine. Most of these were elderly and/or had underlying health conditions, and there is no evidence that it was the vaccine that caused their deaths or was even in any way involved. When over forty-eight million people have been vaccinated, it is only natural that at least this many of them would die in that time frame - that is just nature taking its course. And when this figure is compared to more than 133,000 people dying from coronavirus itself, it is clear to see which one is more fatal. 

Regardless of what parents, children, or anybody else believes about the covid-19 vaccine or vaccinations in general, this program is going forward. The government has decided that it will benefit everybody in the country, especially the young people receiving the vaccine, and hopefully, it will be another crucial step in the ever-shortening road to the end of the covid-19 pandemic.