ALL 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK will start being offered a first dose of the Covid jab within weeks, after a recommendation from vaccine experts reports the BBC.
They will not need parental consent and will receive the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, the Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation said on Wednesday.
Advice on when to offer the second dose will come later, the JCVI added.
The change in guidance means around 1.4 million teenagers will be eligible.
Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said there were plenty of vaccines available, adding: “We have the supply and I’m expecting this to start in a very short number of weeks indeed.”
“There is no time to waste in getting on with this,” he said, highlighting that children will start going back to sixth forms and colleges soon. “I want us to proceed as fast as is practically possible.”
The JCVI is a group of independent experts and their advice is a recommendation upon which governments then act. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have all said they will begin to roll it out.
Until now, children over 12 have been able to get a jab if they have certain health conditions, live with others who are at a high risk or are nearing their 18th birthday.
The only vaccine currently approved for under-18s in the UK is Pfizer-BioNTech.
Some other countries have already been routinely vaccinating children over 12. The US has been doing so from May, as well as some European countries, such as France and Italy, after EU regulators gave them the go-ahead. Other countries that are vaccinating children include Brazil, Japan, Israel and Hong Kong.
Last month, the JCVI stopped short of opening up jabs to 16 and 17-year-olds as it wanted time to examine the risks and benefits, as well as reports of rare adverse effects such as inflammation of heart muscles.
But on Wednesday it said these events were “extremely rare” and usually occurred within a few days of a second dose, typically more in young men.
Data from the US suggests that in males aged 12 to 17 years 9.8 cases of myocarditis were reported per million first doses given.
This rises to 67 per million after the second dose. Most people recovered quickly.
The JCVI said it expected one dose of the vaccine would give the 16 and 17-year-old age group good protection against severe illness and around 80% protection against hospitalisation.
Prof Wei Shen Lim, who chairs the Covid part of the JCVI, said the change in advice was not just for the benefit of wider society, but for teenagers themselves.
“While Covid-19 is typically mild or asymptomatic in most young people, it can be very unpleasant for some,” he said.
On whether to roll out jabs to over-12s, he said the JCVI will review the data but it is a decision they “prefer not to make at this point”.
After the announcement, Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged people to “listen to the JCVI” and get the 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.
