[katieHaylor (OP)]

Pauline asks:

Fabulous news [re. UK approval of Pfizer BioNTech Covid vaccine]. However, I am intrigued as to why it hasn't been licensed for under 16 year olds. Unlike flu vaccine which has been obviously licensed and deemed safe for over 5 year olds.

What do you think?

[alancalverd]

There are ethical problems associated with clinical trials with participants unable to give legally informed consent, and known problems of predicting pediatric response to adult medication: in short, children are not small adults, even though some are quite large, so the benefits and risks of pediatric vaccination are currently not known.

Since the risk associated with COVID infection is known to be small in children, there is no urgency to  vaccinate known healthy kids for their own sake, and immunocompromised kids can presumably be isolated from this as well as any other infection. The only immediate concern is whether children can be carriers, which is almost certainly the case, so immunising susceptible adults should minimise the overall risk.

It is possible that the age limit will be gradually lowered, or dramatically lowered if there is evidence that the virus pool in schools is infecting families quicker than they can be protected,