NHS draws up plans to start vaccinating children as young as 12 in two WEEKS

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The NHS has drawn up plans to offer Covid vaccines to children as young as 12 when schools return, it emerged today.

NHS England bosses yesterday told trusts to be ready to expand the roll out to 12 to 15-year-olds in just two weeks’ time.

Children would not need parental consent to get the vaccine, health officials told The Telegraph.

Britain’s medical regulator has already said the Pfizer and Moderna jabs are safe and effective for the age group.

But the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations (JCVI) — which directs the country’s jabs roll out — is yet to give the green light to the plans. 

The NHS is gearing up to administer the doses in case it is asked to roll them out next month when schools return.

But the JCVI is unlikely to say children should be jabbed, because it says the benefits of inoculating the age group do not outweigh the risks.

The Department of Health — which asked the JCVI for a recommendation on jabbing the age group — said a decision is yet to be taken.  

Both Moderna and Pfizer’s jabs have been linked to myocarditis, a rare heart problem believed to affect around one in 20,000 young people.

The JCVI has claimed the risk of heart inflammation still outweighs the benefit of Covid jabs for healthy under-16s. It is closely monitoring data from America, France and Canada which have all decided to routinely jab under-12s already.

AstraZeneca’s jab is not being recommended for under-40s in Britain because it has been linked to very rare blood clots.

All 16 and 17-year-olds are already being invited for the Pfizer vaccine and don’t need permission from a parent or guardian to get one. But only under-16s who live with vulnerable people or who have immune weaknesses themselves are being invited at present.

Britain’s daily Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths have been slowly climbing for weeks, raising alarms over a fresh wave when schools return. 

NHS England’s regional offices emailed trusts yesterday to tell them to draw up the plans, reports The Telegraph.

They were told to have the plans ready by 4pm on Friday, and be able to roll out the first doses to the age group from September 6 when schools return. 

Emails revealed the aim is to inoculate three quarters of 12 to 15-year-olds by the date November 1.

They also say children should be deemed ‘Gillick competent to provide own consent’ over jabs. This refers to a legal decision in 1985, which ruled that a teenage girl could obtain contraception without her parents’ involvement. 

The JCVI has previously insisted there is not enough data to support a roll out in this group. But the newspaper reports further research on this is about to be published.

The top committee has been showing signs that it could approve vaccines for secondary school children.

In July, they said: ‘The minimal health benefits of offering universal Covid vaccination to children do not outweigh the potential risks.’

But just two weeks later deputy chief medical officer and committee member Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said it was ‘more likely, rather than less likely’ that jabs would be offered to 12 to 15-year-olds.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: ‘No decisions have been made on vaccinating 12-15 year olds and it is inaccurate to suggest otherwise. 

‘Ministers have not yet received further advice from the JCVI on this cohort. We continue to plan for a range of scenarios to ensure we are prepared for all eventualities.’

There are more than 2.6million children aged 12 to 15 in England, according to population estimates from the Office for National Statistics.

Latest Department of Health data showed 15 to 19-year-olds in England had the highest Covid infection rate in the country at 929.7 cases per 100,000 people, or one in 107 being infected.

Children aged 10 to 14 had the fifth highest infection rate at 354.2 per 100,000, or one in 282.

The Department of Health has split the population into 19 different age groups to help monitor Covid infections. People aged 20 to 24, 25 to 29 and 30 to 34 had a higher infection rate than 10 to 14-year-olds. 

It is not clear whether NHS Trusts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have also been asked to draw up plans to vaccinated secondary school children.

But all four nations follow advice from the JCVI on which age groups should receive the Covid vaccine.

It also not clear whether 12 to 15-year-olds could be offered two doses should the JCVI recommend they are vaccinated. Currently 16 to 17-year-olds are only being offered one jab.

A public health expert has said vaccine advisers in the UK are being ‘very cautious’ when it comes to widening the jab roll out but that ‘waiting and watching costs time’.

Professor of global public health at Edinburgh University Devi Sridhar told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: ‘I think the issue is they (the JCVI) are being very cautious.

‘They’re waiting and watching and I guess the issue with a pandemic is that waiting and watching costs time.

‘And time is the currency now that matters because it’s not like we can wait and watch and in six months say “OK, it’s safe, let’s vaccinate”.

‘In those six months if a large percentage of 12 to 15-year-olds get infected, in some ways they’ve lost that window of time and so I think perhaps they don’t feel the urgency that they should be feeling given it’s an emergency situation and we have Delta, which is so infectious. I mean, it’s just flying through schools as we know.

‘But not just here, Germany, Denmark, even places like New Zealand and Australia are struggling with Delta compared to the original virus.’