Children aged 12 to 15 set to get Covid vaccine despite JVCI recommendation; Ministers 'look likely to approve' jabs for all 12 to 15-year-olds after asking the UK's chief medical officers to review the evidence for a mass rollout.

Byline: By, Mike Kelly

A COVID vaccine rollout across the UK for healthy 12 to 15 year-olds is expected to go ahead despite the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation JCVI recommending against it.

It looks like Ministers will approve the jabs for the age group after asking the UK's chief medical officers to review the evidence for a mass rollout, reports PA.

The JCVI decided against backing the move on health grounds alone because COVID-19 presents such a low risk to younger teenagers.

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However Professor Chris Whitty and the three other chief medical officers in the UK are reviewing the wider benefits of vaccinating the age group, such as minimising school absences, and are expected to present their findings within days.

The Government is awaiting their advice before making a final decision but ministers have indicated they are keen on authorising a wider rollout.

Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies Sage member Professor John Edmunds warned there could be "a lot of disruption" to education without a wider rollout as he estimated around six million children have not contracted coronavirus.

"It's a very difficult one, They're going to take a wider perspective than the JCVI took, I think that's right," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"I think we have to take into consideration the wider effect COVID might have on children and their education and developmental achievements.

"In the UK now it's difficult to say how many children haven't been infected but it's probably about half of them, that's about six million children, so that's a long way to go if we allow infection just to run through the population, that's a lot of children who will be infected and that will be a lot of disruption to schools in the coming months."

Professor Wei Shen Lim, the JCVI's chairman of COVID-19 immunisation, said the group's view was that the benefits of vaccinating the age group "are marginally greater than the potential harms" but that the benefits were "too small" to support a universal rollout at this stage.

But multiple newspapers reported Government insiders playing up the likelihood of a subsequent approval of the programme, with a Government source telling the BBC: "We believe there is strong case to vaccinate but await the advice of the chief medical officers."

On Friday, the JCVI approved a widening of the vaccination programme another 200,000 children...

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