The new advice from the UK’s chief medical officers that 12- to 15-year-olds should be offered one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine has been welcomed by Scotland’s largest teaching union and the children’s commissioner.
Offering the vaccination to young people will make secondary schools safer by reducing the risk of the virus spreading through school communities, as well as helping reduce the level of disruption to education, the EIS teaching union has said.
Children’s commissioner Bruce Adamson, meanwhile, has also welcomed the move, saying that 12- to 15-year-olds want the option of being vaccinated.
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Mr Adamson says that children have the right to the best possible health and that is not just about protecting them from Covid but also protecting them from the indirect impacts of the virus, such as isolation and disruption to their education.
Yesterday, the UK’s four chief medical officers (CMOs) recommended that 12- to 15-year-olds be offered one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The decision came in the wake of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommendation that because the health benefits of vaccination were only “marginally greater” than the potential harms, there should not be mass vaccination of the age group.
However, the JCVI also said that it had not considered the wider benefits of vaccination, such as the impact on education, and that the UK’s governments “may wish to seek further views” on the wider societal and educational impacts.
That piece of work has now been completed and the four CMOs set out their conclusions yesterday.
They said that education was a key consideration in their decision to recommend vaccination but warned it would not be ” a silver bullet” and, while the vaccine would reduce disruption to education, it would not eliminate it.
Professor Chris Whitty - England’s chief medical officer - said that the vaccine would probably reduce the chance of a child getting Covid by 50 to 55 per cent, and it also reduced the chance of passing it on.
Responding to the decision, EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said: “The EIS welcomes this decision by the CMOs as the latest step in the battle against coronavirus. Offering the vaccine to young people in the 12 to 15 age group will make secondary schools safer by reducing the risk of the virus spreading through school communities and will help reduce the level of disruption to education. While we know that young people are less likely to become hospitalised through Covid, offering the vaccine will offer important additional protection against the virus.”
Since Scottish schools returned in mid August, following the summer break, the number of pupils absent as a result of the coronavirus has been rising. On Tuesday of last week, 7 September, more than 38,000 pupils were off for Covid-19 related reasons.
The official attendance and absence data for the new school year started being recorded on Thursday 19 August, when 7,435 pupils were absent as a result of the pandemic.
Mr Flanagan added: “In the few short weeks since our schools returned after the summer, we have already seen significant outbreaks in some school communities. This has led to an increase in enforced absences from school, with record numbers of students and staff forced to stay at home due to coronavirus. Rolling out the availability of the vaccines to a wider group of young people will reduce the risk of further outbreaks linked to schools and help ensure that education provision can continue on as normal a basis as possible.”
Mr Adamson, the children’s commissioner, said children would now have to be supported “to make informed decisions about their own health”.
He added: “Children of this age group have told me over the past few months that they are in favour of having the choice to be vaccinated. That is not to say that all of them had made a decision about whether they would get a vaccine but they wanted the option to be available to them. Of course, there have been some children who are concerned about vaccination, or who told me about parental concerns. It is important that there is no stigma attached to the choices that children make about vaccination.
“It is essential that this advice is communicated directly to 12- to 15-year-olds in a child-friendly way, so they can understand why they are now being offered the vaccine, and can have any questions they might have answered in a way they can understand. Children have the right to access appropriate information on decisions affecting them.
“Parents and carers will play an important role in supporting the decision-making around whether a child chooses to get vaccinated so it is important that they have all of the necessary information to support that choice.”
On the back of the CMOs’ advice, the roll-out of a vaccination programme has been announced in England. Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told BBC Breakfast this morning that it was hoped the first vaccinations would take place by 22 September, a week tomorrow.
A roll-out is yet to be confirmed in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said she would like to “get on with vaccinating 12- to 17-year-olds, as quickly as we possibly can” once the advice says “it’s safe to do so”.
