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Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid accepted advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation on Wednesday 22 December 2021

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said:

Our independent medicines regulator, the MHRA, has approved Pfizer’s paediatric vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 following a thorough review of the safety and effectiveness.

I have accepted the advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to offer vaccines to at-risk 5-11 year old children and extend the booster programme to at-risk 12-15s and all 16-17s.

While our current and unrelenting focus is ensuring all eligible adults are offered a COVID-19 booster vaccine by the end of December because two doses do not provide enough protection against the Omicron variant, the NHS will prepare to offer vaccines to at-risk 5-11 year old children.

We have secured supplies of the Pfizer/BioNTech paediatric vaccine which will start to arrive in the UK from mid-January.

Vaccines are our best defence against this virus and our booster programme has accelerated rapidly, with almost 30 million doses administered and more than half of adults jabbed, securing vital protection.

This is a national mission and we urge everybody to play their part by getting their vaccines and booster doses as soon as possible.