Amelia Cutting
After recommendation from vaccine experts, all 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK will be offered their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
The jab received by around 1.4 million teenagers will be the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, which can be given without parental consent, the Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation said on Wednesday.
The JCVI is a group made up of independent experts who advise the government. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have all confirmed that they will follow this advice to get young people vaccinated.
Until now, only children over 12 in the UK have been able to get vaccinated if they have certain health conditions, live with high risk people or are nearly 18. This differs from the US who have been vaccinating children over 12 since May, alongside France, Italy, Brazil, Japan, Israel and Hong Kong.
It is only the one dose that the teenagers will have initially and they will wait for more details regarding their second doses.
Why has the decision only just been made?
One reason for this is because of the risk of inflamed heart tissue which is higher after the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. This helps to explain why JCVI did not offer jabs to this age category last month, as they wanted time to examine risks and benefits- such as reports of the inflammation of heart muscles.
They have recently said that these events were ‘extremely rare’, mostly in young males and usually occurred within the few days of receiving the second dose, with most people recovering quickly.
In terms of protecting against Covid, the JCVI said it expects one dose to give the 16-17 age category a ‘good protection against severe illness and around 80% protection against hospitalisation.’ PM Boris Johnson said he urged people to ‘listen to the JCVI’ and get their jab. “They are extremely expert, they’re amongst the best, if not the best in the world – they know what’s safe and I think we should listen to them and take our lead from them,” he said.
The JCVI have said that “prioritising the first dose and delaying the recommendation on the second, allows the JCVI to provide the best available advice with the latest available information for the second dose.”
Just two weeks ago, the JCVI recommended that the clinically vulnerable children who face an increased risk from Covid-19 should be vaccinated, with a universal rollout for all under-18’s advised against. However, the decision to now offer the Pfizer vaccine to 16 and 17 year-olds has been made after a review of various different factors: safety profile, the risk of severe disease, occurance of long-lasting symptoms in teenagers, disruptions to non-Covid vaccination programmes, and the mental/educational impacts of the virus.
Universities minister Michelle Donelan has denied that any amount of political pressure has been put on the JCVI to vaccinate this age group: ‘that’s not how they operate’, she said.
Public responses
Abi, a 17 year-old student from East Yorkshire, said: “I am pleased that the rollout has been extended to my age group, however I do feel that we should have been prioritised before now.”
“Considering that we have been at school since March and cases rose when schools started to return, it seemed to make sense for this age group to be vaccinated ASAP to stop spreading but this did not happen.”
“Throughout this academic year, I have had to isolate and be off school for 24 days in total, despite not contracting Covid myself at any of those times. This was because the spread in schools was so high so we were either at home isolating or there as a precaution against the rising cases.”
“However, considering the worries over side effects of the jab on younger people, it is good that sufficient evidence has been looked at before making the decision to extend the rollout.”
Others have said that they believe it is a good thing as it will ‘help control infection rates in high schools/colleges for younger students’, something which has been a big concern this year, especially with students missing so much in-person teaching time.
Featured image courtesy of Marisol Benitez on Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.
Amelia Cutting
I'm Amelia- a graduate from the University of Leeds and current NCTJ Level 5 Diploma student!