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?

Many 17yo will be in sixth form, so either at a separate college or part of a school, so an educational establishment

The difference between primary and secondary is we have approval for >12, so it could happen, whereas for

The vaccine centres I work at prove that it is easy enough for 16/17yr olds to attend and get the vaccine without the need for us to go to them as suggested. Theres regularly queues outside before we open and have had several clinics where we've ran out and had to ask them to return to the next clinic walk in clinics. I dont buy into the reports of low uptake, its bullshit from what I'm seeing every day . They've haven't long been eligible to get it for a start, and some areas where quicker to roll it out than others, give them a chance to actually get it before reporting there's a low uptake.
16/17yo can have theirs done at an adult vaccine site, there's more legal requirements and resources needed in place for 12-15yo that many mass vaccine sites aren't able to facilitate, that's why the younger teens are being seen at GP hubs or health centres

Schools are there to educate not vaccinate! If you want your 16/17 to have the jab take them yourselves. Parental responsibility, it’s a thing!

Ds is in the 12-15 eligible group. It would make sense for those in special schools in that group to be done in school as they are for other vaccinations.
Ds is very unlikely to cooperate in a medical setting so I suspect they will not manage to vaccinate him unless they sedate him first which I would think will not be agreed to.

@Sillysop92

Schools are there to educate not vaccinate! If you want your 16/17 to have the jab take them yourselves. Parental responsibility, it’s a thing!

This a thousand times over!!! Same applies to any age child for any vaccine to be fair

@Wellbythebloodyhell That’s interesting. Do you have any sense of who might not be able to access the vaccine among 16-17 year olds? Is there any way of understanding whether young people from vulnerable groups (eg looked after children) may have difficulty accessing vaccine centres from your perspective?

"This a thousand times over!!! Same applies to any age child for any vaccine to be fair"

The problem is we as parents don't have the physical handling training to safely prevent ds punching or biting the person sticking a needle him in.

@Underhisi I hope that, if coronavirus vaccine eligibility is extended to your ds’s age group, that he can access it with the support in place that you describe (that is—as I understand from your post—in school, as with other large-scale vaccination programmes).

@Piggywaspushed

Can you please respond to my query about whether you have thought about the wait for 15 minutes issue, supervised? or do you not think that's an issue?

I can tell you now, school vaccines are not socially distanced. They're a scrum. We can , this once, avoid disrupting lessons, using established walk in centres.

Students have to be supervised for 15 minutes after the HPV vaccine too, and that's carried out in schools.

DD's school IS doing a vaccine programme this week.

She's still not had an invite from NHS.

She went to a walk in last week as soon as they allowed 16+ and had her jab (I checked websites every day until I found one that opened to 16+). This walk-in then had to shut due to anti-vax protesters harassing young people queuing for their jabs.

Never heard that about HPV in my school!

@Wellbythebloodyhell

In a group WhatsApp I'm in were all fully vaccinated, there's only 2 in 10 of us that have said we want our teenagers vaccinating.

I’m in a WhatsApp group with 7 other mums, we all have a 16 year old child. All of our kids have been vaccinated already - we all went within 2 days of it being available to 16 year olds. All of my dds friendship group (about 20 kids) have had it. I only know 1 person that doesn’t want her child to have it & that’s because she thinks God will protect them (she has regular 2 way chats with god, says it all really) The 16 year old has had the jab, went in her own & didn’t yell her mum. From my experience this age group are very keen to get the jab & get back to normal life

@Piggywaspushed

Never heard that about HPV in my school!

It happens in my school and it's listed on the patient information leaflet (under side effects) www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/19033#gref

Ohhh. OK.

Our school nurses were redeployed to deliver covid vaccines. They are delivering other vaccines in schools too (covid vaccine availability dips during this time) but have dropped routine physical and mental health support in schools but kept their child protection responsibilities.

For them to be delivering additional vaccines in schools during school holidays will be tricky.

The school vaccine service is already running behind on regular vaccinations due to the previous lockdowns

It seems clear why schools aren’t offering jabs at moment…..holiday period.

Once it is offered to 12-15s (highly likely) then the vaccine service might operate in schools.

• all vaccines for this age group require parental consent in advance. This would be no different for Covid vaccine. No-one would be given it or pushed to have it without parental consent.
• Schools themselves are merely the venue. Outside teams come in and deliver the jab and deal with storage issues, bringing the vaccine with them. It is delivered within a day.

Given schools are offering the nasal flu spray vaccine (again, being the venue and administrator of consent letters, rather than actually delivering the spray themselves) then offering the Covid jab could make sense to 11-15s if it is approved by JCVI in term time and can be organised in practical terms.

OR

Alternatively, the current centres could just be used.

For 16-17s, we are talking about 6th Formers and then a rolling group of Yr11s from September as they turn 16. Thus group consent themselves. They have received invitations themselves and most will be able to go to drop-ins or book appointments (not via national system but local arrangements) in the next 2 weeks before they return.

Pop-up vaccine centres appear where take-up is low and it is likely these will appear at 6th Form colleges in areas where take up is low from September. This will aid anyone who hasn’t got round to it/found it hard to access.

Parents who are concerned about it all need to chat with their 16+ about it. In most cases, these teens will be led by their parents, but parents need to understand too that it is their own choice at this age and some may pick something different to what parents would go for.

Thank you @WombatChocolate. That is very clear.

Schools aren't closed in Scotland