UK: COVID jab wait for 12-15 year old could extend up to February 2022

The UK government has asked children aged between 12 and 17 years to wait for five months for taking COVID jabs. The UK government is aiming to innoculate eligible teenagers who are, probably, more at risk than children below 18 years of age. Earlier, the health officials had set a target of four weeks for children to receive the vaccine. However, if the vaccination of the 2.8 million eligible 12- to 15-year-olds continues at the current rate, it could take until February next year for some teenagers to be jabbed and a five-month gap for others, reported The Guardian, citing Labour. As per the latest analysis, in the last four weeks, more than 1,47,000 pupils received the COVID vaccine each week, and the latest data suggests that nearly 60% of children are still unvaccinated, while 42.1% have received COVID jabs.

Labour asked the UK government to utilize community pharmacies and small clinics, and bring back volunteers and retired clinicians, to boost vaccination procedures for children aged between 12 and 15 years. The shadow education secretary, Kate Green, said, "Children have been treated as an afterthought throughout this pandemic and continue to be let down by a Conservative government which has shown no care for them and their futures," reported The Guardian. Meanwhile, several teachers have also urged the health department to speed up vaccination procedures among the children and to put up COVID appropriate measures to curtail the spread of COVID in schools and improve key mitigations such as better ventilation and reconsidering the measure of close contact isolation, among other things.

COVID cases in UK

The number of cases of COVID infection in England is on the rise. In the last 24 hours, the country reported a total of 42,484 new cases. In the past seven days, the country reported a total of 978 death cases. On November 22, as many as 50,800,732 people received their first dose of the COVID vaccine, and 46,186,817 people took a second jab in the last 48 hours. According to a report published by the WHO, the total COVID deaths across Europe are likely to exceed 2 million by March next year, making the pandemic one of the major causes of death in the region.

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