School is in For Vaccines?

A number of people have questioned whether there is any need to vaccinate school-aged children against Covid-19. Afterall, young people rarely (although there are exceptions) get a life-threatening infection with this virus. Schools, however, do have mature people (e.g. teachers and support workers) working and visiting them. There is also a likelihood of children transmitting the disease, when they return home to their families. It might even be easier to proceed with uninterrupted education in schools, where most pupils have some immunity to infection. There is also the 'doomsday scenario' of a new variant of Sars-CoV-2, eventually also proving dangerous to younger age groups. A number of drug companies have now been trialling their vaccines in younger subjects (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/31/pfizer-covid-biontech-vaccine-safe-effective-children). In the US, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been trialled in more than 2.25k 12-15 year olds. The vaccine was well-tolerated (as well as preventing infection). It produced only mild to moderate side-effects, similar to those seen in 16-25 year old subjects. The data is currently being submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration. Pfizer also plan to submit it to the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. If approved, the option of giving the vaccine to school-aged recipients, will exist. Moderna is also recruiting subjects in the 16 months to 12 years of age cohort for tests with their mRNA vaccine. If this works out, Primary school and kindergarten children could also be protected.