COVID-19 and flu vaccination 2022 to 2023: child rights and wellbeing impact assessment

2. What impact will your policy/measure have on children’s rights?

This CRWIA relates to COVID-19 vaccination policy for winter 2022 for all children and young people (under 18 years of age). The previous CRWIA that detailed our policy from December 2020 – spring 2022 can be found here.

The policy aims to protect children and young people from severe infections of COVID-19. Our policy to offer vaccinations to children and young people will reduce the chance that they will experience severe outcomes should they contract COVID-19, and its potential for resulting in hospitalisation and mortality.

This policy will have a positive impact on children’s rights. We have assessed the impact under the ‘Getting It Right for Every Child’ (GIRFEC) principles and values.

Healthy

Vaccinating children and young people will reduce the risk of serious illness and death, particularly in those with underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk from COVID-19. These positive outcomes will in turn alleviate some of the current and potential future pressure faced by the NHS and wider system.

Reducing pressure on the NHS will allow vital services, which have been disrupted during the pandemic to resume, ensuring that children and young people, as well as the wider population, can assess vital physical and mental health services.

Achieving

The UK CMOs, in common with the clinical and wider public health community, consider education one of the most important drivers of improved public health and mental health.

The closure of schools and the move to remote learning had a disproportionate impact on some children, which is likely to have created long-term disadvantage. The negative impacts related to the disruption of education have been especially great in areas of relative deprivation which have been particularly badly affected by COVID-19.

Vaccination of children and young people could potentially play a role in supporting educational continuity primarily by:

• reducing the likelihood of young people contracting COVID, and thus being required to self-isolate themselves;
• reducing the likelihood of close contacts having to self-isolate as a result (this is still causing educational disruption despite a revised policy on self-isolation and contact tracing); and
• reducing the likelihood of young people transmitting the virus to unvaccinated or even vaccinated adult staff who then have to self-isolate, although the likelihood of this may be thought of as relatively low if there are high vaccination rates amongst staff.

Active

There is a strong recognition that play and social interactions, with friends and wider family, plays a key role in optimising children’s development and wider wellbeing.

Children and people have been severely impacted by the epidemic with normal educational, cultural, sporting and social activities.

Vaccination of children and young people supports the Scottish Government’s efforts to return to a more normal way of living and should help prevent more restrictive measures such as lockdowns being put into place in the future.

Respected and Responsible

The Scottish Government has made it clear that children and young people and their parents will be supported in their decisions and will not be stigmatised, whatever decision they reach on the vaccination offer. Individual choice will be respected.

The impact assessment found that overall the vaccination policy will have a positive impact as it will help mitigate both the health and wider social harms that children and young people have experienced throughout the pandemic and will help support Scotland’s strategic intent of managing and living safely with COVID-19.

No negative impact of the policy has been identified. However, just as with any medical product COVID-19 vaccination may, on rare occasions, result in adverse events.

The most frequent adverse reactions following vaccination are injection site pain, fever and headache. These reactions are generally mild, self-limiting and short-lived, typically lasting one to two days.

Extremely rare reports of myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of the lining outside the heart, resulting in breathlessness, palpitations or chest pain) have been reported as a side effect of Pfizer Comirnaty 30MG (for those aged 12 and over) and Pfizer Comirnaty 10MG (for those aged 5-11). This rare side effect may affect up to 1 in 10,000 people.

The MHRA and JCVI continue to monitor reports of serious adverse events and update their advice accordingly.

Overall, the JCVI agreed that the potential health benefits of vaccination are greater than the potential health risks.