A decision on whether to offer Covid vaccinations to all five- to 11-year-old pupils will be “carefully” reviewed over the following few weeks, scientists say.
A new age-appropriate formulation of the Covid-19 vaccine for use in younger children was approved yesterday by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is advising that primary-aged pupils who are in a clinical risk group, or who are a household contact of someone (of any age) who is immunosuppressed, should be offered a primary course of vaccination.
But Professor Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol and a member of the JCVI, told LBC Radio that there is a low number of severe Covid cases among children.
When asked about wider rollout of vaccination to this age group, he said: “The factor that persuaded the government to introduce vaccination for older children was the disruption of their education and the ability of vaccines to reduce … transmission of infection among children as well as between children and adults.
How many primary school pupils will get the Covid vaccine?
“With the Omicron variant, in particular, the ability of the vaccines to do that will be reduced.
“Many of these children will now already have had the infection. We just need to weigh up all of those things and make sure that a decision to move forward would benefit those children and actually do some good.”
Professor Anthony Harnden, who is also on the JCVI, told BBC News: “We still want to look at further data on that. It is really important that we see what the severity of illness is with Omicron on this particular age group.
“We know that with previous variants, the illness was very mild in children.
“We also want to have a look at further data from the United States, where they are deploying the vaccine to all well children, in terms of a safety profile. So there is no need to make that decision at the moment, but we will carefully review that over the following few weeks.
“What we have got to remember is that we vaccinate children for the benefit of children. The vaccines aren’t hugely good at preventing transmission. They do prevent a bit.
“They have got to be shown to be really good for the children themselves, and that is the data that is lacking at the moment.”
Last week figures released by the Office for National Statistics showed that more than one in 20 primary school-age pupils tested positive for Covid-19 in the week ending 11 December.
