Vaccinating teenagers may be needed to prevent a further Covid-19 outbreak in the winter, one expert has suggested.
Professor Peter Openshaw, a member of the Nervtag advisory group, told Sky News: “I think it’s quite likely, unless we do something pretty radical by way of interrupting the spread of this virus, that we will have to extend vaccination into teenagers in order to prevent a further outbreak in this coming winter and the following spring.
“I think we do know that (vaccines) are very effective at inducing an antibody response and they are safe – that has to be balanced against the relatively low risk of disease.
“The risk of disease is not zero and of course there are descriptions increasingly emerging of teenagers getting infected and then getting prolonged effects of so-called long Covid.”
He added: “The immune responses (between adults and teenagers) are pretty comparable and there was one study which suggested that there are different immune responses in teenagers but actually there’s other studies which show that between the ages of 12 and 18, you respond pretty well the same as an adult.
“And I think that it looks very much as if, the way that we need to interrupt this outbreak, is to extend vaccination into those age groups.”
