Scottish Government must offer Covid vaccine for all 12-15 year olds

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Scottish Government must offer Covid vaccine for all 12-15 year olds

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Humza Yousaf

With pupils back in school after the summer holidays, high community infection rates and the highly infectious Delta variant, children and teenagers are at greater risk of Covid-19 infection and therefore of developing chronic illness than at any other time.

Office for National Statistics data suggests that 7% of Primary aged children and 8% of Secondary aged children infected with SARS_COV_2 will go on to suffer from Long Covid. We risk a large portion of an entire generation succumbing to long-term chronic illness

Around the world, many millions of adolescents aged 12-15 have been vaccinated against Covid-19, with overwhelming evidence that benefits to young people far outweigh any vaccine risks.

In the UK, the regulatory authority carried out a detailed safety and effectiveness assessment of both the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines and approved them for all young people aged 12+ in early June and in August respectively.

Yet the Scottish Government refuses to offer the vaccine to any but a very small minority of young people in this age group, based on un-transparent advice from a UK advisory body that has no statutory power in Scotland, and whose claims contradict findings from regulatory and advisory bodies around the world.

Please urge Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf (Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care) to follow the example of other countries and start making the vaccine available for all young people aged 12+.

Helen Goss, on behalf of Long Covid Kids. Almuth Ernsting, on behalf of Zero Covid Scotland.

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To: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Humza Yousaf
From: [Your Name]

We believe that the Scottish Government should make the Pfizer and/or Moderna vaccine available to all 12-15 year olds living in Scotland without further delay. By doing so, Scotland would follow the example of most EU countries, the USA, Canada and others who, between them, have vaccinated many millions of young people of this age group against Covid-19.

In the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), together with the government advisory body Commission on Human Medicines carried out a detailed review of the safety and effectiveness of giving either of those two Covid vaccines to young people from the age of 12. On 4th June, they announced: “Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective in this age group and that the benefits of this vaccine outweigh any risk.” This has since been followed by a similar finding about the Moderna vaccine. Similar findings were reached by various regulatory agencies around the world.

So far, the Scottish Government has followed the Westminster government in offering the vaccine only to a very small minority of young people under 16, deemed to be particularly vulnerable or to have a particularly vulnerable household member. The large majority of 12-15 year olds cannot get vaccinated regardless of their and their parents/carers wishes.

The Scottish Government justifies its refusal to offer Covid-19 vaccines to this age group by saying they follow advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), who claim that there is not enough evidence of health benefits from vaccination for that age group as yet. JCVI is an advisory body for governments in England and Wales. There is no legal reason why the Scottish Government needs to follow its advice. We believe that it would be wrong for Scotland to continue denying vaccines to this age group based on JCVI advice because:

● It is contrary to the UK’s MHRA assessment and to assessments by advisory bodies and regulators around the world
● JCVI have failed to publish any data or information about what data they have looked at
● JCVI have stated that they did not consider Long Covid, even though 4-8% infected adolescents suffer symptoms after 12 weeks (osf.io/grzma/) and thousands have been ill for more than one year;
● JCVI claim to have considered hospitalisation rates, even though hospitalisation of children and young people (6-17) reached record levels so far in the UK during July, as a result of the Delta variant. (osf.io/grzma/).

Every week that the government withholds Covid vaccines from adolescents means more teenagers needlessly getting infected, some of whom will be hospitalised, with even more going on to develop Long Covid. Please use the Scottish Government’s devolved powers and offer vaccination to everybody aged 12+.