'Close call' on vaccinating children decision, Sage advisor to Government says

A Sage Government advisor says it is "close call" on whether or not the Government should vaccinate children.

The Pfizer jab has been ruled safe by the MHRA for use on 12 to 15 year-olds in the UK and countries including the USA have been offering the vaccine to teenagers. But the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JVCI) will have the final say on whether teens and children will be vaccinated in the UK.

Professor Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, told Sky News “it’s a really close call” on whether children should be vaccinated.

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“Children still are not at risk of severe disease, even taking into account the multi-inflammatory syndrome, which is also rare, and long Covid – they’re much less at risk of severe disease,” he said.

“So if there was to be a push to vaccinate them, it’d be a case of vaccinating them to reduce transmission in the community, rather than primarily to protect them.

“And we’ve still got a much greater impetus to vaccinate the adult population, particularly those sectors of the adult community which are harder to reach, are hesitant about being vaccinated.

“An ethical and moral question could then be raised that, if we then have vaccine left over, it would still be better to probably send it to other countries where they are in greater need of the vaccine and where more lives are likely to be saved by it. So it’s a really close call as well.”

Asked whether vaccinating children would be to protect vulnerable adults or perhaps to stop spread in the classroom, Professor Calum Semple told Sky News: “That’s a really good argument that can be made for vaccinating children.

“If there was a situation where the Government was to say that after two doses there would no longer be a need to isolate with symptoms, then double vaccination or evidence of double vaccination could open education up and prevent whole classes being sent home.

“Remember, this winter we’re going to have all the other usual respiratory viruses out there causing misery and they will be the cause of it, not necessarily Covid.

“So, if you go purely on a crude symptom-based approach, you’re going to have lots more people isolating unnecessarily. So, the presence of double vaccination could mitigate against that.

“On the other side of the coin, though, the safety data for younger children is currently incomplete and we are waiting for more information to come out of countries which have vaccinated children, such as America.”

Professor Semple told Sky News the safety data for vaccinating children needed to be “incredibly robust” owing to their low risks from Covid.

“The knowledge around safety in children is growing, but I would say it’s not as robust as it needs to be if there was to be blanket vaccination of children who themselves are not at risk of very severe disease.

“That’s the crux of the matter. If you are going to vaccinate children to protect society, that is a fair decision that can be made, but you want to do that with full knowledge of the safety data.”

Speaking as the MHRA ruled the Pfizer vaccine is safe for 12 to 15 year olds, Dr June Raine, MHRA chief executive, said: “We have carefully reviewed clinical trial data in children aged 12 to 15 years and have concluded that the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective in this age group and that the benefits of this vaccine outweigh any risk.

“We have in place a comprehensive safety surveillance strategy for monitoring the safety of all UK-approved COVID-19 vaccines and this surveillance will include the 12- to 15-year age group.

“No extension to an authorisation would be approved unless the expected standards of safety, quality and effectiveness have been met.

“It will now be for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to advise on whether this age group will be vaccinated as part of the deployment programme.”

A decision from the JVCI on vaccinating teenagers is expected in the coming days.