UK vaccination update
pharmafile | June 7, 2021 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
With 21 June fast approaching, and the Delta variant rising in the UK, here’s the latest vaccine update.
Firstly, the MHRA has approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children aged 12-15.
The health regulator has said that it is safe and effective in this age group and the benefits outweigh any risks.
The MHRA said it had carried out a “rigorous review” of the vaccine in adolescents.
The UK’s vaccines committee will now decide whether children should get the jab, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock said any decision would be “clinically based”.
Vaccines will also be offered to under 30s this week.
Matt Hancock told Sky News, “This week we will be opening up vaccines to the under 30s, and so we are getting a step closer to the point when we have been able to offer the vaccine to all adults in this country.
“Once we have got everybody having had their second dose, then you will get this protection that we are seeing at the moment among older people, you’ll get that protection throughout the whole adult population.”
There has also been doubt as to whether the country should lift all COVID-19 restrictions on 21 June.
A two-week delay is being considered to allow more of the adult population to be vaccinated.
Office for National Statistics data on Friday suggested infection levels in England had risen by about 75% in a week, with 85,600 people thought to have had COVID in the week ending 29 May – or one in 640 people – compared with 48,500 the week before.
Prof Stephen Reicher, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises the government, said: “I think by the government’s own criteria it’s quite clear that it would be foolish to proceed on the data that we’ve got at the moment.
“The risk would be very great indeed. Again, I make the point that it is about data not dates, and if you make it too much about the dates then you box yourself into a corner and I think that’s what the government has done.”
And lastly, in slightly different news, UK dating apps will now provide stickers to indicate whether users have been vaccinated.
Tinder, Match, Hinge, Bumble, Badoo, Plenty of Fish, OurTime, and Muzmatch have all signed up to the scheme, in partnership with the UK government.
However, there will be no way of verifying whether those displaying the badge have genuinely had the vaccine.
Lilly Subbotin
