Why aren’t schools giving the vaccine?

[bsquared]

Schools are really efficient at giving the vaccine to school-age children and have been doing it this way for decades.

Why is the distribution of the coronavirus different?

Ineed Sajid Javid suggested schools for vaccinating 12-15 year olds and headteachers basically said 'don't drag us into that shit'.

Bad enough being called child abusers for asking them to wear a mask or have an LFT. Vaccinating kids against covid in schools is basically asking heads to take a massive kicking. Again.

Most of DS’s friends are vaccinated or being vaccinated this week (letter came on Thursday, he was vaccinated the same day). It is entirely their choice- in one case going against the friend’s mother’s anti-vax beliefs. The clinic in our local market town opens today to 16 year olds, we took DS to a bigger town as he wanted it out of the way ahead of prom at the end of this week.

Perhaps we should just allow the schools to get on with teaching? There is much concern about how much time has been missed and I’d rather schools were just focussed on that. As a PP said unthread, the flu vaccine will be given in schools and secondary schools will be testing pupils at the start of term.

Maybe parents could help by supporting their DC with vaccination?

@choirmumoftwo

Apart from the other issues raised here, I suspect vaccine storage would be an issue in schools. Pfizer has very specific requirements.

In a minute someone will tell us that schools have freezers in the kitchen and, failing that, labs.

OP 16-17 year olds have literally only eligible for one week. There are hundreds of mass vaccination centres readily available with the appropriate infrastructure to facilitate 15 mins waiting and social distancing and medical care on site immediately. And the quicker kids are vaxxed the better - why wait two weeks till they back?

Why on earth do you think schools doing it (as well as LFTs) would be better than the above?

Once all the windows are open, born, we could probably just store the Pfizer in classrooms.

@lannistunut

Do schools have nurses now? If they do, wouldn;t school nurses be on holiday during school holidays?

Presumably it would be inefficient surely to add more complications to the vaccine supply chain just for this (relatively small) group of recipients.

Whenever we had vaccinations at school it wasn't the school nurse that gave them, an external vaccination team would come in and set up the hall as a vaccination centre and it'd be done by actual nurses.

@noblegiraffe I don't blame them.

If schools do end up being the vaccination centres it will be the UFT nightmares coming true! Didn't they publish a letter for parents to use to tell teachers not to vaccinate their children (even before the vaccine even existed!). I know our local Primary School received such letters

If schools were asked to distribute the vaccine at some point this year, would they really say, ‘no’?

The vaccine is more effective than LFT, track and trace, CO2 detectors and isolation in terms of reducing risk of contagion ... would we not be hoping, from the outset, to be part of its distribution (... given that it is traditionally how vaccines have been very effectively distributed to school-age children?).

Is this not the most effective way to make our schools safer?

Maybe most parents don't want to have their children vaccinated. Maybe the government and schools know that.

@noblegiraffe very true. I’m already stocking up on thermals.

Following a request from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for advice on a possible extension of the COVID-19 vaccination programme, the JCVI has looked at the available evidence around vaccinating children and young people under the age of 18.

From today, the JCVI is advising that children at increased risk of serious COVID-19 disease are offered the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

That includes children aged 12 to 15 with severe neurodisabilities, Down’s syndrome, immunosuppression and multiple or severe learning disabilities.

The JCVI also recommends that children and young people aged 12 to 17 who live with an immunosuppressed person should be offered the vaccine. This is to indirectly protect their immunosuppressed household contacts, who are at higher risk of serious disease from COVID-19 and may not generate a full immune response to vaccination.

Under existing advice, young people aged 16 to 17 with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious COVID-19 should have already been offered vaccination.

The JCVI is not currently advising routine vaccination of children outside of these groups, based on the current evidence.

As evidence shows that COVID-19 rarely causes severe disease in children without underlying health conditions, at this time the JCVI’s view is that the minimal health benefits of offering universal COVID-19 vaccination to children do not outweigh the potential risks.

Almost all children and young people are at very low risk from COVID-19. Symptoms, when seen, are typically mild and fewer than 30 children have died because of COVID-19 in the UK as of March 2021.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the only vaccine that has been authorised for children in the UK, for those aged 12 or older. This followed a US clinical trial in around 1,000 children aged 12 to 15 that found side effects in this group were generally short lived and mild to moderate.

Real-world data on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in children is currently limited, but there have been extremely rare reports of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the membrane around the heart) following the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in millions of younger adults.

Until more safety data is available and has been evaluated, a precautionary approach is preferred.

Until more safety data is available and has been evaluated, a precautionary approach is preferred.

@Peteycat

Maybe most parents don't want to have their children vaccinated. Maybe the government and schools know that.

Polling actually shows the opposite.

Oh right really. Well not according to what I'm hearing.

If schools were asked to distribute the vaccine at some point this year, would they really say, ‘no’?

If you were offered a vaccine for your dc today at a nearby health centre, would you really say no I'll wait until they're offered it in school instead? How about parents take some responsibility for a change instead of expecting school to do everything.
If parents really want their dc vaccinated they'd move heaven and earth to facilitate it surely

The text I copied is from the gov. Uk website for your reference.

Nobody is thinking about mass vaccination in schools. Just you.

Wellbythebloody hell brilliant post. Very true. If its so important to the parents you take them. The children have had enough to deal with but hey some think strangers coming at them with needles when they are away from parents and guardians is ok.

@Peteycat do you feel the same about the flu jab/nasal spray?

So this is the ‘do it for me’ brigade

Why can’t parents actually be responsible for sorting out their own children’s health?

In fact most 16/17 year olds are capable of getting themselves there and signing up.

Mobile clinic should be available, but again this should be down to parents to request appointments or bring the children to get vaccinated - so your part!

Nobody is thinking about mass vaccination in schools. Just you.

www.tes.com/news/covid-jabs-could-be-part-school-vaccination-offer

@Peteycat

Oh right really. Well not according to what I'm hearing.

Only 18% of all parents polled said they wouldn't get their kid vaccinated (29% unsure).

74% of unvaccinated parents said they wouldn't get their kid vaccinated, maybe you hang around with a lot of unvaccinated people?

How can schools do it when there are specific handling and storage implications for Pfizer? They can't just magic up the facility to do this. Plus schools are on their knees already with all the other last minute changes and the absolute shitshow that has been heaped upon them for the past 18months. It's not too much to ask parents to take their child to a readily available facility for a life saving vaccine.

My experience of vaccines (specifically flu) to primary school children in school is that it is very clearly not the schools who give it.

Schools facilitate vaccination - through administrative support in delivering letters and collating responses, and then organising the flow of classes, and through providing space where the vaccinators work.

However, the letters are from the local health team, as are the nurses who come in to deliver the vaccines.

I am not quite sure what the OP envisages.

If a wider rollout to vaccinate the majority of school pupils is planned, it is possible that schools might be asked to provide space and administrative support for this to take place, in order to allow these vaccinations to take place within the school day. Whether this is an efficient use of nurses / other vaccinators, given setup and travel time, is a question.

If the OP envisages that schools will write the communication, train the vaccinators, store the vaccine, and take on full responsibility for vaccine rollout - that is wholly different from current vaccine drives and I cannot see why a school would agree.

@Peteycat

Oh right really. Well not according to what I'm hearing.

Please post the evidence to support this statement. Good luck finding it given that it isn't true.

It has to be medically trained person who gives vaccines, surely it is always a group of HCPs who come into the schools to give flu, HPV etc

When DS had his boosters in Secondary school, the consent wasn't done through the school, so the school provided the space and facilitated the pupils going in and out of lessons, but not the actual process