Important point here- given JCVI has said the benefits of vaccinating 'healthy' adolescents was 'marginal'. We've had ~9000 hospitalisations with COVID-19 in children so far. These docs show 80% of hosp were directly *due to* COVID-19 with the *majority* in 'healthy' children.
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1439998800354029569
There have been 3,400 COVID-19 hospitalisations in under 18s since 4th June, when MHRA authorised Pfizer for adolescents- 1700 of these have been in 6-17 yr olds. Based on recent docs, the majority of these would've been in 'healthy children'.
Of course we didn't even offer vaccines to children with 'pre-existing conditions, who JCVI say have 50x the risk of ICU admission until 19th July, *6 weeks later*. How many were preventable had we started vaccinating all kids earlier? And who is accountable for these delays?
Just want to clarify that I don't at all believe in the separation of kids into 'healthy' & with 'pre-existing conditions'- it's clear vaccines benefit all kids. But this narrative is being used by JCVI to suggest vaccines are only marginally beneficial among healthy kids.
So I'm using similar terminology to challenge it. There is no doubt vaccination over the summer would have had substantial impacts in reducing hospitalisations, infections (and therefore long COVID), as well as onward transmission to others.
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