The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
His Majesty’s Government (HMG) are committed to protecting people most vulnerable to covid-19 through vaccination as guided by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
On 6 April 2023, HMG accepted advice from the JCVI that clinically vulnerable children in England aged 6 months to 4 years should be offered a covid-19 vaccine. I am informed that all four parts of the UK intend to follow the JCVI’s advice.
Although young children are generally at low risk of developing severe illness from covid-19, infants and young children who have underlying medical conditions are over seven times more likely to be admitted to paediatric intensive care units compared to those without underlying medical conditions.
Over 1 million children aged 6 months to 4 years in the US have received at least one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine since June 2022. Data from the US showed no new safety concerns and the most common side effects reported were similar to those seen with other vaccines given in this age group, such as irritability or crying, sleepiness, and fever.
The UK’s independent medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), approved the Pfizer-BioNTech infant vaccine for children aged 6 months to 4 years on 6 December 2022 after assessing the safety, quality, and effectiveness of the vaccine against MHRA’s robust standards.
Following this authorisation, the JCVI advised that children aged 6 months to 4 years who are in a clinical risk group (as defined in the UK Health Security Agency Green Book, which sets out information for public health professionals on immunisation) should be offered the vaccine. The JCVI does not currently advise offering covid-19 vaccination to children aged 6 months to 4 years who are not in a clinical risk group.
The JCVI has advised that eligible children should be offered two doses of the vaccine, with an interval of 8 to 12 weeks between the first and second doses. The NHS in England will begin offering vaccinations to those eligible in England from mid-June.
I am now updating the House on the liabilities HMG have taken on in relation to further vaccine deployment via this statement and accompanying departmental minutes laid in Parliament containing a description of the liability undertaken. The agreement to provide indemnity with deployment of further doses increases the contingent liability of the covid-19 vaccination programme.
The extension to this cohort of children aged 6 months to 4 years creates a new contingent liability under the indemnities in the existing vaccine supply agreement between HMG and Pfizer.
Deployment of effective vaccines to eligible groups has been and remains a key part of the Government strategy to manage covid-19. Given the terms on which developers have been willing to supply a covid-19 vaccine, we, along with other nations have taken a broad approach to indemnification proportionate to the situation we are in.
Even though the covid-19 vaccines have been developed at pace, at no point and at no stage of development has safety been bypassed. These vaccines have satisfied, in full, all the necessary requirements for safety, effectiveness, and quality.
We are providing indemnities in the very unexpected event of any adverse reactions that could not have been foreseen through the robust checks and procedures that have been put in place.
I will update the House in a similar manner as and when other covid-19 vaccines or additional doses of vaccines already in use in the UK are deployed.
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