UKC

Travelling soon from UK to Europe with 12-15 year olds?

Read this useful Summary:

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/travel/travel-restrictions-winter-famil...

The UK *is* Europe

<sighs heavily>

Metasighs heavily.

《GIGA-Sighs》

There's always a **** lurking about on UKC

Ummn... No. UK is *PART OF* Europe... But not part of Schengen nor EU.

Yes, the current problem in Europe is clearly caused by children aged 12-15 with only one dose of vaccine.

/sarcasm

So the thread title is incorrect then?

Nope…

but Kimonos comment ”UK is Europe” is… which I was repliying to…

While I have little hope for any winter tourism this year at all, can someone explain to this EU citizen why teenagers can't be vaccinated twice in the UK? Why is the British vaccination policy different to the EU and US one?

Anyway, common rules have their advantages it seems, but I don't want to start the next flame war here. 

Why should the EU change their rules to suit us? Last I checked we left the club. 

Decision from our expert panel JCVI.  

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-september-2021-co...

Indeed, our kids (sweden) both double jabbed. En masse at school, 4 weeks between shots. 90%+ up take. It's not hard or at least shouldn't be. They just utilise the same team, admin and on site organisation for other vaccinations that occur at school. 

Interesting. If I read it correctly, the justification for not doubled dosing children is based on what's best for *them* as opposed to what's best for *everyone else*. I guess this is why we have ended up with different strategies than the EU (but it just a guess - it could be something else). Which approach is ethically best will be one for the academics. 

That's been my take on it.

 That's in large part a reflection of their remit - and they kicked part of this decision over the line to others where they recognised that non-medical aspects such as school attendance needed to be considered (although that was still about the children, not everyone else - but moving beyond the medical grounds). 

Certainly been interesting to watch the medical ethics develop in such public scrutiny here.  It's not one size fits all so judging "best" in isolation is almost futile.

The UK has a much lower fraction of more vulnerable people refusing vaccination than many other places, and so we have less pressing need to drive R<1 by fully vaccinating down to younger ages.  

In part, this is perhaps because of the unusually high level of trust in the scientific/medical authorities here, and the decisions they make today will go on to affect that trust for decades.

Makes the UK fully vaccinated numbers look better.

I am surprised that we have a lower proportion of idiots than many other places.

Our Costa Blanca holiday at xmas has just been ruined. All the money out of the window....(and more to the point a holiday that we longed for a very long time) I despair, why not give them a second dose??

Oh and it is 12-18 year olds in Scotland who don't receive a second jag at the moment. So do I have to wait for six years now before I can go and travel as a family( my son is 12 and a bit)? I really despair...

Yep. Its scuppered a lot of family plans, including ours (have 12 & 14 yo sons, both single jabbed). And there's me tripled jabbed!

JCVI have revised their guidance for the UK to now support offering a second dose to all 16 and 17 years olds, with those not deemed "at risk" able to receive a second dose 12 weeks after the first.

It seems that the Pfizer 2nd dose side effect of concern is much less common with the UK's use of a 12-week gap than the much shorter gap used internationally. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-advice-on-covid-19-booster-v...

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-resources-f...

Edit: Can't find a sign that Scotland have updated their practice to follow JCVI guidance - a point of distinction is that England is legally mandated to do as JCVI say, but as I understand it Scotland could have done otherwise as they are not legally mandated to do as JCVI say.

I wouldn't want to pre-empt JCVI, but the direction of travel on second doses seems clear as the evidence comes in...

I can't bring myself to despair at an actual expert panel of actual expert issuing carefully considered, tight-rope walking guidance that contributes to the healthy environment around vaccination in the UK as well as putting child welfare at the front of their decision making.

The approach taken here of offering a first dose only to non-vulnerable children - which confers almost all the health protection in the short term - whilst studying the developing data to understand how to most safely provide the second dose to our children against known, documented side effects is in my view highly admirable.

Goodness, who could ever have foreseen such an eventuality... completely out of the blue, some might say unprecedented.

Most wouldn't.

You mean they (the experts) recommended an unstudied use (one dose) for a vaccine approved throughout the EU since 28th May with a two-dose regime and have now realised they were wrong. Still, counting one dose as fully vaccinated kept the UK well up in the league tables!

The UK is using a different 2-dose regime to the EU, that would seem to be both more immunogenic to adults and less harmful (in terms of very low probability side effects) to children.

I can’t construe this as an admission of “wrong”, but clearly stated precaution to hold at one for more data that was updated as more data came in.

As the unfolding situation across Europe shows, staring at top level vaccination league tables has been misleading at best.  

I'm fine with political cynicism, but do you really believe the JCVI - made up of UK *and EU* health professionals - care two hoots about some national posturing 'league table'?

Despair won't help. Everyone needs to accept that holiday bookings might not happen.

The country went back in to lock down on the day we were due to go on holiday last year, as someone who worked through without a break whilst being very short handed I could have really done with the holiday but shit happens. 

This is utter BS. If you want to comment on JCVI decisions you should read their minutes and understand their decisions instead of spouting political claptrap. Throughout this pandemic it seems to me that their recommendations have been vindicated, time and again.

Interesting indeed. While I can't argue with their risk vs benefits consideration It's still a bit strange that expert panels in other countries have reached other conclusions. Who could tell who's right and who's wrong.

In Germany 3G is not checked with kids as all German kids are tested regularly in school. I don't know how 2G is handled with a oven 12 year old though. 

If it's risk versus reward, the biggest leap in protection is on the second dose, so the 2nd dose is more justified than the 1st. The uk's policy is a little odd. 

why do they not just give the second dose then and forget the first. lol

When we were in France in September with a single vaccinated 17 year old, the rules were that they would treat under 18s the same way as their parents, i.e. if the parents were double vaccinated, the children could do the same things.  Has this changed?

From what my missus said, the reason that the Germans do 2 is that with their health system they have a good chance of spotting the side effects of the 2nd dose very quickly, and can then easily treat it.

Whereas in the UK we have a .... let's just say less.....  well basically we don't have the confidence that the kid would even be able to see a doctor on time, let alone be diagnosed and treated. So we don't give the second dose.  Two different countries with hugely different systems, and two different outcomes.  Perhaps both correct given the reality of the situations.

That makes sense. Not good for the uk in any respect though. 

It's good in that the solution matches the context of the problem, rather than ignoring it. It would have been easy for the JCVI to say "let's just do the same as everyone else" (double vaccinate children), but that would have been an abrogation of their responsibilities (primarily to the individual children).

I don't know enough about the comparison between the German and UK health systems to judge which may be over- or under-confident about their ability to catch serious side effects - I suspect that's more to do with social philosophy (the rights of individuals vs. society) than anything statistically concrete. But I could be wrong.

My point was more that uk kids have worst of both worlds, can't get doctors appointments readily and are only vaccinated once. The vaccine programme matches the health service, but it's still lose, lose. 

I don't see how it's the worst of both worlds. The JCVI assessment says that the downsides of double vaccination (side effects) are greater than the upsides (covid protection). If you accept that, then as far *as the child is concerned* single vaccination is better than double vaccination (and hoping the side effects can be mitigated). You may disagree with the JCVI, but I'm not in a position of knowledge to argue on that subject. I could however argue that the German kids have actually drawn the short straw in that they have to take the increased risk of negative side effect (for social rather than personal medical reasons) and then rely on the 'system' to offset that increased risk. 

As for the assertion that you "... can't get doctors appointments readily ...", again all I can do is recount my own personal experience (and that of my family) which is that I have had several reasons to need an NHS GP doctor's attention quickly in recent months and I've always been able to talk to a doctor on the day I called the surgery and have had face-to-face appointments on the same day if required (in the GPs judgement). I accept that others may have had different experiences - perhaps I've just been lucky.

Not if the 2nd dose carries 10x the side-effect risk to children (as it appears to on a 4-week schedule), and given that the health risk of Covid itself is already very, very low at these ages (look at the stats on RSV for a comparator).

 The first dose brings a big chunk of health protection.  The second dose makes a bigger difference to protection against infection and transmission and - if done on a 4 week schedule - brings a significantly larger (but still small) risk of side effects.  The direct benefit to children comes largely with the first dose, the societal benefit with the second.  

The UK has gone for two doses for those at increased risk either directly or through vulnerable household members.

A lot of nations have a  more pressing societal need to control transmission through fully immunising children, even when this apparently puts the children at a greater risk of side effects than from the virus itself. This pressing needs stems from a failure to get sufficient numbers of older people to engage with vaccination, meaning that children must be vaccinated in order to reduce R to try and preserve universal healthcare in the face of more vaccine refusal from older people.  

It's ironic that jimtitt says above that this single dose was about pushing the UK up the league tables on vaccination; the reason I've seen the league-tables as a myopic way of understanding things is that more vaccination of young people in other nations outside the UK plasters over their lower vaccination of older people pushing them higher up the league tables, and so leading to a false sense of security, whilst back in the land of ground truths,  hospitalisation and death risk increase exponentially with age, and delta can't be suppressed short of full on lockdown, so massive structural differences can and do hide in the top level vaccination figures.

There's been a lot of denial about this over the last few months, but winter is rapidly sweeping that away with European nations starting to hit actual or extrapolated death rates now that are in excess of what the UK saw before vaccines were on the scene (!), and with the only options left on the table are to let things boil over to the point universal healthcare is lost, or to go for pretty stringent lockdown-level control measures.

as always what you say makes sense for the uk. I wonder what the swedish reasoning is, double jabbed stats are pretty good, at least equal or marginally better than the UK for over 16s. The oldies are getting 3rd jab and flu, anyone can have 3rd jab at 6 month point onwards. My only thinking is double jabbing kids relates to the never closing schools or wearing masks in them policy. If it is, it's unusual in that it's not been said, everything else is very open. Maybe the thinking is they can get medically intervention quicker, I only know our kids school, but they have an on site nurse, a very old school thing, who does spend a proportion of most days there. 

Yes, I think the policy here really does need to be looked at on a nation-by-nation basis.  I appreciate that doing what is judged in the best interests of children and society locally is at odds to the imposed requirements for travel, and that this is inconvenient; that's life in a pandemic though, and this winter is looking tough for a lot of Europe, I doubt travel arrangements are going to get better over the next month...

Sweden seems to be taking a much more similar approach to the UK than most of Europe, having allowed a large wave to spread post-vaccination (that was probably in younger people given the lack of many corresponding deaths); they did this before delta came along though, where as the UK was after (obviously not by specific intent as nobody knows when a worse variant is going to come along).  

So if you have similar vaccine uptakes by age, we're probably  the most similar in terms of immunological position, but with the UKs recent infection driven immunity being about 50% larger in people and 4 months newer (less wanning), looking at this plot from February 2021 onwards [1].  The UK is only just at the point it can prevent exponential rises in infection and then hospitalisation with Delta as we go in to winter; most of Europe clearly can't.  With Sweeden falling between the two I can see why there's more justification to give children two doses against their direct/immediate/medical interests.

Odd though that it's not been discussed openly.  I regard the transparency of JCVI as central to maintaining the credibility of vaccination decisions in the UK and avoiding a worsening of the anti-vax position, which has been aggressively pushed here for the last 12 months. 

Interestingly there's been a lot of negative commentary on the UK vs Europe over our allowing Delta to spread post vaccination; I only noticed the similarities with Sweden last week - I've not seen any negative comments on that.  Presumably your healthcare is not so overloaded though?

[1] -  https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelect...

BBC are now reporting that JCVI has advised Gov Ministers that:

Covid booster jabs should be offered to all over 18s to help stop a potential wave driven by the new variant Omicron, the UK government’s vaccine advisers say.

The gap between second dose and booster should also be reduced to three months – down from the six-month gap currently being used.

Children aged 12 to 15 should also be invited for a second dose three months after their first.

The rollout of the booster programme should be prioritised so people are offered in order of vulnerability.

So in other words the JVCI has accepted that personal risk is outweighed by the social need for vaccination and that a single jab for the young is insufficient.

Societal benefit is not within JCVI's remit.  

Their document linked above clearly explains their decision for 16 and 17 year olds and it's not a stretch to imagine that a similar justification lies behind this change.

I agree with Si dH's comment up thread.

Probably moot to the issue of travel plans as most of Europe continues to fall to what looks like their worst Covid wave yet in terms of hospitalisations and deaths, even before we find out how this new variant plays out and before winter fully lands.  Bad times for everyone

You mean "Covid booster jabs should be offered to all over 18s to help stop a potential wave driven by the new variant Omicron, the UK government’s vaccine advisers say"  isn't social decision but simply on the risk/ benefit equation for individual patients? Exactly how many people have been hospitalised and died from Omicron in the world. And what suddenly changed in the evidence of transmission/illness/ death to move from one jab is wonderful to ram whatever you've got into the kids? Sometimes I think you should go back and read your previous pronouncements a bit more carefully.

I think you may be confusing J V-T (England  dCMO) with the JCVI. The JCVI statement says "The overall intention of the measures advised above is to accelerate the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines and raise levels of protection across the population" which is somewhat different than what the BBC reported as being said by 'advisors'.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-advice-on-covid-19-booster-vaccines...

Sorry, not made my case most clearly there I agree.  The educational disruption components are societal and are outside their remit.  Public health is societal and is within their remit - but they continue to place the immediate health of children above wider societal issues.    

The reasons for their change on ages 15-16 were clearly set out and communicated well before Omicron and was absolutely evidence driven.  

Given the nature of the data and decision that emerged for ages 16-17, and that the same issue was causing the same "hold at one" decision for ages 12-15, it's not a surprise that the second dose was coming - following their precautionary approach that holds the individual health of children at a higher position in the balance of factors than others.  

I'm sure Omicron has brought that forwards.

I'm glad that when I do find I've not put my case clearly or even made a mistake (I noted one elsewhere today where I got something quite wrong) that I'm still not apparently following some spiteful attempt to paint every single decision the UK takes as wrong or to look for winners vs losers in different responses.  The gods alone know the UK has made a lot of bad decisions over the pandemic, especially in the first year, but it pains me to see a case where we are genuinely being led by the science being politicised like this.  As Si dH said, JCVIs decisions have been vindicated, time and again.  The 12-week dose in particular has turned out to have immunogenic benefits and to mitigate side effects for children; at the time the decision was subject to a lot of high level political attack on the European stage, and it seems regretful to me that more other nations did not adopt this evidenced, better practice.  Each to their own.  We've also had a lot of high level political stick from across the water over the last few months, and suddenly the German health minister pivots 180 degrees to the same position, but stated far more bluntly (vaccinated, recovered or dead...) and with all the hospital load landing in an uncontrollable wave in winter instead of drawn out in the good times.   It's disappointing to see that the political leadership across the water isn't doing a better effort of showing our lot up for what they are.

You mean what the BBC  said and what is then reported on UKC is confused (innacurate)?

I think the BBC article [1]  they likely pasted from was very badly written.  When jimtitt did a copy and past from it (I assume, no link given) they got this text that they posted.

"Covid booster jabs should be offered to all over 18s to help stop a potential wave driven by the new variant Omicron, the UK government’s vaccine advisers say"

When I read it 10 minutes ago, I got this text - with "vaccine" deleted

"Covid booster jabs should be offered to all over 18s to help stop a potential wave driven by the new variant Omicron, the UK government’s advisers say"

Now, the article says:

Covid booster jabs are to be offered to all over-18s to help stop a potential wave driven by the new variant Omicron.

In all three cases, the headline linked doses in over-18s to stopping the wave, where-as discussion of societal benefit vs individual risk on this thread had been clearly confined to children, so whilst I think it was disingenuous of jimtitt to jump from one to the other in their post, I do also think the BBC headline started out as quite misleading - hence probably the rapid series of changing headlines shows...

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59465577

Yes, see my reconstruction of the changing headlines below.

I think it's pretty poor of the BBC not to show any indication that the headline has been - repeatedly - revised.

Sorry, I think you are being rather mean here. I obviously factored in this trip might never happen - and yes, I have written off the money - but basically we have stuck to all the rules for the last two years and we have just looked forward to a holiday, finally,  and taking into account all the factors we booked this trip to Spain fairly late as to make sure we know what's happening;  and basically now a small group of people in the country is being discriminated against, families with children 12-17 year olds. It is very random. If my son was three months younger he would be allowed to travel (without vaccination), now he can't - with vaccination as well. You could travel if you are 96 or 2 . It really does not make any sense.

Disingeneous? The connection was made in the post I directly replied to. Assuming it was a direct quote and not someones interpretation.

I said why I can't bring myself to despair over this.  I don't expect everyone else to be like me.  I don't think I could cope. 

I've intentionally avoided making any comment on your situation as what I think is clearly irrelevant.  It's clearly very frustrating for you. I wouldn't wish frustration or disappointment on anyone.

I think if nations across Europe had been more honest about their precarious situation going in to winter, and their concomitant need to tighten restrictions further to stave off the rapidly approaching disaster, more people would have thought twice about booking holidays there this winter. 

Well, I've done my best to share the different perspectives that I think have brought us here; differences in policy have their basis in science more than randomness.  

It's all very crap - turns out that global pandemics are really crap

I just checked the local rules and they state (in the region of Lower Saxony) that vaccination and test rules do not apply to under 18 year old.

So at least in Germany the article is baseless.

"Befreit von der 2G- bzw. 3G-Regel sind Kinder und Jugendliche unter 18 Jahren" 

Ok, taken . It s is just crap as you say!

A bad case of what used to be called 'chinese whispers'...

JCVI -> J V-T -> BBC (with revisions) -> ChrisJD/UKC -> jimtitt. Each adding their own 'slant' on what came before. Hardly unusual or even perhaps controversial

But only for those already in Germany or travelling from areas which are of no concern, entering Germany only fully vaccinated are permitted. And Neiedersachsen is hardly relevant when she wants to go to Spain.

I cut/pasted direct from the BBC 'Breaking' news tickertape at around 3.30 pm, so no 'slant' added from me.

Indeed, accepted.

Although an information theorist might argue that even taking an (verbatim) extract is a 'slant' since it loses the context of the extract, i.e., the information contained in the words of the isolated extract is different to that of the same words in the original context. But let's not go down that (academic) rabbit hole.

It wasn't an 'extract' by me. It was the whole of the BBC post on their breaking news tIckertape.

Ok, my wrong assumption. Must admit, I didn't even know there was a BBC tickertape. Must keep up with this new technology!

It's the BBC 'Live' feed just for COVID (I called it a 'tickertape' my /slant lol):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/59473695

The item I cut/pasted from has long gone off the live feed.

Plus the BBC flag some items on the main page as "Breaking News". These breaking news items get updated (and then disappear ... usually into a proper news post) as the story develops.

More changes on way:

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/travel/france-require-negative-covid-te...

at some point ........ "Details on when the new rules on testing will come into effect, and whether both antigen and PCR tests will be accepted are yet to be announced."

Reported today via iNews:

https://inews.co.uk/news/nhs-covid-letter-travel-vaccinated-12-15-christmas...

Last Updated 9:10 am

This is all very well, but first of all they have to actually vaccinate them....No sign here yet of a second dose for the 12-17 year olds.