Here is the PA Media story from the opening of the education committee hearing with Prof Chris Whitty.
About half of children have already had Covid-19 and the rest are more likely to get it without a vaccine, England’s chief medical officer has suggested.
Prof Chris Whitty warned that “quite a lot of damage” could still occur over the winter months.
He told MPs: “Let’s make an assumption that the great majority of children who’ve not currently had Covid-19 are going to get it at some point over the next period.
“It won’t be necessarily in the next two or three months but they will get it sooner or later.”
But addressing the Commons education committee, Whitty added: “Vaccination will reduce that risk.”
England’s chief medical officer was facing questions from MPs about the inclusion of children in the government’s Covid-19 vaccination programme.
When asked what proportion of children had already had Covid-19, he replied: “It varies by age and it does also vary by setting, but I think if we go for roughly half I think that is a reasonable stab at this.
“That’s half over the period of the entire epidemic to date, and we’ve got quite a way to run.
“We’re running into winter so there’s still quite a lot of damage that could be done in terms of disruption.”
England’s deputy chief medical officer Prof Jonathan Van-Tam added that because the Delta variant is so infectious “we are not looking at a theoretical risk” of children aged 12 to 17 becoming infected.
He said: “I think it is really quite inevitable that they will be so at some point.”
Prof Van-Tam warned that these pupils could become infected during their GCSEs and A-levels when it is “extremely inconvenient to be laid low” with a cough, fever, and respiratory symptoms."
Warning; this came from the Grauniad feed