Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance has been issued to clinicians to enable them to prescribe covid-19 vaccine to clinically extremely vulnerable children under the age of 16.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) currently advises that only those children at very high risk of exposure and serious outcomes, such as older children with severe neuro-disabilities that require residential care, should be offered vaccination with either of the two currently available vaccines. The JCVI considers that there is not usually a good case for immunisation as there is very limited safety data on vaccination in adolescents, and almost no data on vaccination in younger children so far. Following infection, almost all children will have asymptomatic infection or mild disease.

The clinicians are advised to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with a person with parental responsibility. However, the matter of whether to vaccinate a child should ultimately be a decision to be made by the physician responsible for the patient.