Britain could approve Covid vaccines for children within weeks following US health chiefs’ decision to green light the move, UK scientists said today.
America’s regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), last night approved plans for the Pfizer jab to be given to children aged 12 and above.
No10 has reportedly already drawn up plans to vaccinate secondary school-aged children with Pfizer’s two-dose jab from September.
But experts are divided on whether Britain should press ahead with the policy, given that youngsters are at such tiny risk of Covid. No10’s scientific advisers today said giving jabs to children is unlikely to be the priority and may not be needed.
Professor Anthony Brookes, professor of genetics and genome biology at the University of Leicester, told MailOnline: ‘We should be worried about the completely unknown and unknowable long-term risks of vaccination of the young.’
Dr Simon Clarke, an infectious disease expert at Reading University, said he expected British regulators to also approve the vaccine for children.
But he added: ‘I don’t see any problem with vaccinating children – but it has to be recognised that it is only being done for wider society.’
Giving children coronavirus vaccines is morally complicated, and UK health chiefs have already said it would only be done if it was deemed necessary.
Advocates of the move argue it would help protect older people by allowing Britain to move one step closer to ‘herd immunity’, curbing the spread of the virus.
They also warn that while the immediate harms of Covid seem small to children, the dangers of ‘long Covid’ on them are still somewhat unknown.
But critics say offering jabs to children would be unethical because it would only be done to protect older people — not youngsters themselves.
Just 57 people under the age of 20 in England have died with Covid since March 2 last year, but teenagers are thought to be just as likely to spread the virus as adults.
Britain could approve Covid vaccines for children within weeks following the decision by US health chiefs to green-light Pfizer’s jab for over-12s, scientists said today. Pictured: Schoolchildren look on during a lesson at Willows High School
Cambridge University academics believe the risk of infants dying of the coronavirus is around 0.00088 per cent — or one in every 125,000. By contrast, the risk is thought to be around 15 per cent in the over-75s.
There is nothing to suggest the Pfizer vaccine will not be safe in children but some have branded it controversial because studies are still ongoing.
There is more doubt about the AstraZeneca vaccine which has been linked to extremely rare blood clots in young adults.
Britons under 40 are being offered an alternative to the British-made vaccine as a result, although this has only been possible because of how many other jabs the UK has ordered.
Professor Brookes said: ‘There are two reasons for using Covid vaccines. Neither apply to children.
‘The two reasons one would normally think about using vaccines for protecting the individual and to protect society — herd immunity.
‘Children do not need protecting as individuals against this virus. It’s effectively harmless to children.
‘In terms of herd immunity, it’s clear that we already have more than enough herd immunity because of the degree of natural infections we had over the last year.
‘Since winter we’ve vaccinated more than 60 per cent of the population, so we totally have enough herd immunity.
‘We don’t need to add to that by vaccinating children.’
Across the Atlantic, there are also concerns over whether the project is just to protect adults, when only 0.1 per cent of US Covid fatalities have been in people under 18.
Professor Adam Finn, a paediatrician at the University of Bristol and member of No10’s vaccine advisory panel the JCVI, said: ‘It is important we have confirmation of the safety and adequacy of immune responses of Covid vaccines in children – particularly because there are some children who are at enhanced risk of serious illness because they have underlying health conditions that render them more vulnerable.
‘However, most children who get SARS CoV2 infection do not get seriously and, indeed, most don’t get sick at all.
‘Although the importance of children in transmission of the virus within the community is not entirely clear, the evidence we have suggests that it is not great, especially where younger children of pre-school and primary school age are concerned.
‘Accordingly immunising children is a low priority and if vaccine-induced protection in the adult population is high from high uptake, good persistence of protection and sustained protection against viral strains as they evolve to evade immunity, then it may not be necessary to immunise children in a general way at all.
‘This is even more likely for young children than adolescents.’
He added: ‘At this point in the pandemic, when there are global shortages of vaccines and very large numbers of people at high risk of severe disease – mostly elderly – worldwide who remain unimmunised – a priority for them but also for us – is to prevent large epidemic waves like the one currently playing out in India.
‘Those outbreaks pose a global threat as they drive evolution of vaccine-resistant variants and their dissemination around the world.
‘So, for now we should make sure that the doses of vaccines that exist are used as strategically as possible – and giving them to children is unlikely to be the priority, at least for now.’
Writing on Twitter today, Aaron Richterman, an expert in infectious diseases at Penn University, criticised the FDA’s approval of Pfizer’s jab in children.
He said vaccinating youngsters in the US over giving jabs to the world’s adult population was a ‘moral stain’.
The FDA’s decision to grant Pfizer’s jab an emergency use authorisation was based on data from a trial of 2,260 participants aged between 12 and 15.
Regulators said the benefits of vaccines for people in the age group outweigh ‘the known and potential risks’.
Acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock said: ‘Today’s action allows for a younger population to be protected from Covid, bringing us closer to returning to a sense of normalcy and to ending the pandemic.
‘Parents and guardians can rest assured that the agency undertook a rigorous and thorough review of all available data, as we have with all of our Covid vaccine emergency use authorisations.’
The FDA’s decision will have to be ratified by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at a scheduled meeting on Wednesday. If given the go ahead, vaccinations for children can begin immediately.
Dr Richard Besser, former head of the CDC told Good Morning America: ‘When we think about the impact on kids, thankfully, the number of hospitalizations and deaths is not as great as in adults, but it goes way beyond that.
‘The mental health impact, the anxiety and depression – the idea that now, with the vaccine, there are high school kids that could start the fall and have a normal high school experience, take off their masks, do sports, engage with their friends and not have to worry – I think that’s absolutely huge.’
But the decision sparked controversy when talks were leaked last week.
Writing in the BMJ last week with two other experts, epidemiologist Stefan Baral from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health said the emergency use authorisation granted by the FDA uses a different measure of risk than when it was given for adults.
They said: ‘Pfizer has asked the FDA to amend the existing emergency use authorisation for its vaccine to allow eligibility for children aged 12 to 15.
‘Unlike for adults, however, the likelihood of severe outcomes or death associated with Covid infection is very low for children, undermining the appropriateness of an emergency use authorisation for child Covid vaccines.’
But Dr Joe Grove, an immunologist at University College London told MailOnline the Pfizer jab has been demonstrated to be safe and effective in all age groups tested so far.
He said: ‘Vaccinating school-aged children has two major benefits.
‘First, the children gain protection from disease and, just as importantly, will be able to return to a normal and largely undisrupted education.
‘Secondly, increasing the proportion of vaccinating individuals will further disrupt the networks of transmission that drive explosive spread of coronavirus. There will be no fuel for the fire.
‘I would hope and expect that safe and effective vaccines are offered to as many people as possible in this country and across the globe.’
And the Adam Smith Institute think tank told MailOnline young people and their parents should be given the choice on whether to be vaccinated.
Matt Kilcoyne, the think tank’s deputy director, said the move would ensure children aren’t stopped from enjoying the likely benefits of vaccination as the country opens up after lockdown — including travel overseas.
He said: ‘It’ll help them go abroad we should reject the absurd possibility that it’s 17 year olds that have to holiday in Bognor Regis while 70-year-olds are set free to travel to Magaluf.’
It comes after the Sunday Times revealed similar plans to begin vaccinating schoolchildren across the UK.
Government sources told the newspaper plans to roll-out the vaccine to children from September hinge on advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) this summer.
Professor Adam Finn, a member of the committee, said rates of the virus over the next few months would inform the decision.
He said: ‘We need to be in a position to immunise children, particularly teenagers, promptly and efficiently if we need to.’
All the main suppliers to the UK — Pfizer and BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna — are carrying out trials now to see if the vaccines work on youngsters.
Academics are testing the AstraZeneca jab on 300 six to 17-year-olds in England and results are expected by the summer.
Pfizer and BioNTech plan to test their vaccine on youngsters aged as young as five later this year.
Up to one in 10 vaccine recipients suffer side effects, including headaches, fevers and muscle pains. More adverse reactions — including blood clots — are vanishingly rare, official data shows.