PROFESSOR Devi Sridhar has said that children over the age of 12 should get a Covid vaccine to ensure schools have a "normal experience" later in the year.

The chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh said that young people can still get chronically ill from Covid and the problem areas going forward will be in schools with large groups of unvaccinated children.

Sridhar also pointed out that the AstraZeneca vaccine - which makes up the main supply of UK jags - cannot be used in young people so these should be sent abroad to help in the global vaccine effort.

She told Good Morning Britain: “If we want schools to continue without disruption in the autumn and lift restrictions so children can have a normal experience, we need to vaccinate them, and if we wait and watch for the evidence it will be too late in the next few weeks.

“We have the supply – it’s not a large amount, it’s a couple of million doses to cover that population of 12-plus.

“And we can’t use AstraZeneca – the main supply we have – in younger age groups, so we should export AstraZeneca and help countries abroad, send those doses, as well as focusing on our adolescents to make sure they don’t have another year disrupted, because that would be an absolute shame.”

Sridhar added: “Children can still get long Covid and can still be chronically ill from this.

“Given that we know children can transmit, where we are going to see problems going forward is not going to be in care homes, it’s not going to be in hospitals, it’s going to be in schools, because this is where you’re going to see large groups of unvaccinated kids together, and we are going to have outbreaks.

“We might as well just do it, roll it out in the summer, get those kids covered so secondary schools can go back, normally, this autumn.

“I think it’d be a huge shame for backing blended learning or having kids doing home learning in the autumn.”

The Herald:

The call to vaccinate young people has also been made by the UK Government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King.

King (above), who is also chair of the Independent Sage Group, questioned whether the Government was pressing ahead with a “herd immunity policy” among teenagers.

He told Sky News: “The Pfizer vaccine has already been given the green light in this country to over 12-year-olds. I think we should run that programme forward quickly.

“But we’re opening schools today and the Government has said 12 to 18-year-olds no longer need to wear face masks at school – I don’t think that was a wise thing to do and I do hope the Government will rethink this in the light of the current figures.”

Sir David added: “Let me ask you, if I may, to ask the Government, are they actually believing in herd immunity amongst school children?

“Is that why they’re saying, ‘take masks off it’, so that the disease spreads rapidly and they all become immune by having had the disease?

“If that is a policy, shouldn’t we be honest with the public, and tell us that is the policy?

“I believe that herd immunity was the policy from the beginning back in February, March last year, so have we returned to that now with the high vaccination level?”