Healthcare staff have been told to start preparing for the mass vaccination of primary school children in anticipation of approval by regulators.
Leaked documents from NHS England say parental consent will be needed for 5 to 11-year-olds and the environment must be “age appropriate”.
Pressure is building on officials to make a quick decision amid spiralling infection rates and the rapid spread in Britain of Omicron, which is evading immunity better than other variants.
The country’s four chief medical officers and NHS England’s national medical director have recommended to ministers that the UK go up to Level 4 from Level 3 and Boris Johnson prepares to address the nation at 8pm about the booster vaccine programme.
The decision to increase the alert level follows advice from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) after a further 1,239 confirmed cases of the Omicron mutation were recorded in the UK as of today.
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Sage scientists have warned that children were key drivers of adult infections in the summer Covid wave. There have already been at least two confirmed Omicron outbreaks in English primary schools.
Modelling by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine released yesterday suggested that a winter wave could cause up to 75,000 deaths by April if no measures were taken and if Omicron was good at avoiding vaccines.
However, it stressed that measures such as working from home, high booster uptake and strong booster efficacy against the variant should keep deaths below 25,000. Data published on Friday suggests three doses of Pfizer vaccine was 75 per cent effective against Omicron, while there are signs from South Africa that it is causing less severe illness than Delta.
It comes as:
● NHS England is preparing to declare a national incident over Omicron and will tell hospitals to reduce routine operations and discharge patients as it predicts a squeeze on beds within weeks.
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● Mandatory vaccination from April will result in 123,000 NHS staff leaving the service, according to a government impact assessment which warns the policy could cost up to £1.2 billion.
● Rishi Sunak faces having to use the new health and social care levy to fund a £5 billion-a-year permanent Covid booster programme.
● Another 54,073 daily Covid cases were recorded in the UK, a rise of 26 per cent in a week, which scientists believe is starting to reflect the spread of Omicron.
Notes from a discussion among NHS England’s senior directors during a Microsoft Teams call this week revealed there were already 1,939 probable Omicron infections on December 7, with more than 1,100 not linked to any travel, indicating widespread community transmission. The hotspots for the infections were in London and the northwest.
The slides, marked “Official, sensitive, internal use only”, describe hospital admissions hitting a high on January 10, with the number of patients in beds reaching a peak on January 17.
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A “get ready” letter for hospital chiefs will urge them to discharge medically fit patients to free up beds, begin a “managed reduction” in elective surgery and start the process of redeploying key staff to Covid roles.
In an effort to shore up defences, the NHS is to make booster vaccines available for those in their thirties tomorrow. The data published by the UK Health Security Agency on Friday suggests those who have received only two vaccine doses could see protection dip below 40 per cent.
Despite taking an early lead in adults, Britain has been slower than other countries to vaccinate children. The European Medicines Agency approved the Pfizer jab for 5 to 11-year-olds on November 25. The US started jabbing them five weeks ago, although so far just 17 per cent have taken up the offer.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is expected to deem the vaccine safe for young children within weeks, while the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is currently debating whether or not to recommend it. The new NHS documents state that the vaccine journey should be “plotted through the eyes of a child” to reassure young patients.
Health bosses are keen to avoid many of the issues that plagued the vaccination of teenagers. Mass rollout for 12 to 15-year-olds began in England in September, yet three months on just 44 per cent have been vaccinated.
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Children aged 12-17 are being offered two full doses of the Pfizer vaccine 12 weeks apart. The dosing regime for 5 to 11-year olds is unclear, but in November the European Medicines Agency approved two Pfizer doses at one-third strength.
Labour has called on the government to give a “Christmas vaccine guarantee” to all unvaccinated 12 to 15-year-olds before they return to school in January.
Professor John Edmunds, a senior member of Sage, told the Royal Society of Medicine on Thursday that Covid vaccines should be rolled out to 5 to 11-year-olds as soon as they received a licence.
The MHRA is expected to announce a licensing decision in the coming weeks. When the equivalent decision was made for 12 to 15-year-olds in June, there was a delay of several months before vaccines started being rolled out, a delay that Edmunds implied had led to a significant number of deaths.
He said: “This wave of the epidemic that we’ve had since June — the Delta wave — has been driven really by school-age children. Every child who is infected will expose an adult. They all live at home with adults. So from that, transmission can occur.”
