Covid 19 School reopening will not depend on teens being vaccinated Varadkar

over 2 years in The Irish Times

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said that the reopening of schools and colleges will not be dependent on teens being vaccinated.
Colleges and schools are going to reopen, he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show. While the return to campus might be staggered, Mr Varadkar said the Government wanted students to have a campus experience.
The Covid-19 vaccination programme is to be extended – with boosters offered to older and vulnerable people and vaccines to children aged 12 and over – amid Government concerns about the potential for reinfection and more cases among young people. Children could start receiving appointments as early as next week.
Chair of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac) Prof Karina Butler said Niac’s recommendation to extend the vaccination programme to children aged 12-to-15 years had been reached following “a lot of thoughtful consideration”.
The decision was in recognition of the need to protect the vulnerable in that age group and those with underlying conditions, Prof Butler said. She acknowledged that the chances of children becoming very ill from Covid were rare, but there were cases where children contracted long Covid, in some cases many weeks after they were first infected and they ended up in ICU.
Ms Butler said Niac believed that the benefits outweighed the risks so it had been decided to offer the vaccine to that age group.
Earlier Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said there was “absolutely no suggestion” children who were not vaccinated could not return to school.
The Minister told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland said I eland had a high level of take-up of vaccines, he added, pointing out that in the first 90 minutes of the opening of the portal to register 16- to 17-year-olds, there had been 10,000 registrations.
Earlier on Newstalk Breakfast Mr Donnelly said his priority was to get the vaccine to children who were at high risk or vulnerable, or were from families with such conditions.
It comes as more than 70 per cent of adults are now fully vaccinated in the State with 85 per cent partially vaccinated and 5.66 million Covid-19 doses administered, the latest official figures show.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin described this as a “brilliant national effort in our vaccine rollout”, HSE chief executive Paul Reid described it as a “great national milestone”.
Prof Butler also said the Department of Health is at present considering advice with regard to the mixing of different types of Covid-19 vaccines.
Speaking on RTE radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show, Prof Butler said the recommendation had been made “in the last few weeks” but she declined to outline what the recommendation had been.
The international data on the mixing of vaccines had been very encouraging, she explained, but Niac had been waiting to see all that data before it made its recommendation.
Mr Donnelly also outlined the plans for booster vaccines in the autumn, which will be combined with the flu vaccine.
The priority will be four cohorts – residential care home residents, frontline workers, the over-80s and the immuno-compromised, he told RTÉ.
Parents’ questions
The Covid-19 adviser for the Irish College of General Practitioners, Dr Mary Favier, has said GPs would be happy to answer any questions parents might have about giving the vaccine to their children.
Dr Favier, who is also a member of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), told Newstalk Breakfast that parents of high-risk or vulnerable children had been asking for the vaccine for some time.
GPs were prepared to address any concerns parents could have about the vaccine, which had been proven to be effective and safe with very few side-effects.
Currently, one in five cases of Covid-19 were in this age group, said Dr Favier, adding this was why vaccination was so important for the individuals and for the population in general.
She anticipated the rollout of the vaccine to this cohort would start with high-risk and vulnerable children and would then be open to all in the 12- to 15- year-old age group.
Extending the vaccination programme to this age group was going to have “a huge impact” on the return to school and would play an important role in education in general, she added.
Although children generally did not experience extreme symptoms from Covid-19, said Dr Favier, there had been cases of long Covid. This was a significant concern and parents would want their children to be safe, she said.
To date, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been approved by the European Medicines Agency for 12- to 15-year-olds. During clinical trials, the estimate for efficacy of both was reported as 100 per cent in this age groups.
The HSE will spend several days this week making arrangements to accommodate the younger cohort. This will involve allowing parents to register their child on the vaccine portal and accompany them to a vaccination centre.

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