Covid: Under-30s to be offered vaccines next week, Hancock says

Health secretary says vaccines ‘severed but not broken’ link between rising cases and hospital admissions

Covid vaccines will be extended to people aged under 30 in England within days, the health secretary has said.

Matt Hancock said the move makes “big strides” towards the goal of offering a vaccine to all adults in the country.

“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,” he told Sky News’ Trevor Phillips On Sunday programme.

“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.”

Mr Hancock said vaccines had “severed but not broken” the link between a rise in cases and an increase in the number of people being admitted to hospital.

“The majority of people going into hospital right now are unvaccinated,” he said.

More than three-quarters of UK adults have received a first coronavirus jab and more than half of the adult population is fully vaccinated.

The NHS is currently offering vaccines to people aged 30 and over.

The health secretary also said there are “plenty of good reasons” to give Covid jabs to children and welcomed the medicines regulator’s approval of the use of the Pfizer vaccine in 12- to 15-year-olds.

“I’m delighted the regulator, having looked very carefully at the data and with their typical rigour and independence, has come forward and said that the jab is safe and effective for those who are over the age of 12,” Mr Hancock said.

“So, we’re only talking about children over the age of 12 here and we’re taking advice currently from the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation (JCVI), the experts in this, on the right approach to putting this into practice.”

He said a plan for “how and if” this is taken forward is a few weeks away.

“We know that the vaccine both protects you and helps you stop transmitting, and I want to protect education as much as anybody does ... and so making sure that we don’t have those whole bubbles having to go home, especially as we saw over the autumn for instance, that has upsides for education,” Mr Hancock said.

Scientists have warned against rushing any decision on the matter and said there was an “ethical issue” around vaccinating children in the UK when doses could be donated to vulnerable adults in lower-income countries.

Professor Anthony Harnden, the deputy chairman of the JCVI, said much of the benefit of vaccinating children would be to prevent transmission to adults, therefore posing “ethical dilemmas as to whether you should” give children a jab mainly for the indirect benefit of adults.

We need to be “absolutely sure that the benefits to them [children] and potentially to society far outweigh any risks”, he said.