Eluned Morgan MS, Minister for Health and Social Services
I have received the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation’s (JCVI) final advice about Covid-19 vaccination for children aged five to 11 who are not considered to be at clinical risk.
Children in this age group who are classed as being at clinical risk are already being offered the vaccine and more than one in four have already taken up the offer of vaccination.
The JCVI advice will be published in due course. I have accepted this advice and thank the JCVI for scrutinising the science and evidence and setting out its advice in a careful and considered way. Our intention, as it has been from the start of the pandemic, is to follow the clinical and scientific evidence.
In accepting this advice, I will be asking the health boards to consider carefully the issue of equity within their operational planning. We will work closely with Public Health Wales and the health boards to ensure there is age-appropriate factual and trusted information about the potential benefits and risks of vaccination for this age range.
I would encourage all families with children between the ages of five and 11, who are not in any clinical at risk groups, to visit the Public Health Wales website for information about vaccination and to begin a conversation about whether they want to take up this offer.
We will be publishing an update of our Vaccination Strategy next week, which will set out further detail about the offer, once the JCVI advice is published.
Vaccination is the most important thing we can do to protect ourselves and our children against ill health. They prevent up to three million deaths worldwide every year.