Not enough benefit to offer all teens Covid jabs

The UK's vaccine advisory body has refused to give the green light to vaccinating healthy children aged 12-15 years old on health grounds alone.

But the JCVI said the government should consider wider issues including disruption to schools.

Ministers across the UK have asked chief medical officers to look at whether that tips the balance.

Meanwhile, an extra 200,000 teens with underlying conditions will now be eligible for two doses.

Doctors identified that children with chronic heart, lung and liver conditions were at much higher risk of Covid than healthy children. A group of 150,000 children with conditions such severe neurodisability, Down's syndrome and several weakened immune systems are already eligible.

This is out of a total of three million children in this age group across the UK.

The decision on healthy children was based on concern over an extremely rare side effect of the Pfizer vaccine which causes heart inflammation.

But as children are at such low risk from the virus, they decided that vaccination would offer only "marginal gain" and, therefore, there was "insufficient" evidence to offer mass vaccination for this age group.