We’ve passed the point where we can safely assume COVID-19 vaccinations are just for adults. Especially since The Guardian reported the death of a healthy 15-year-old girl on October 3, 2021. Moreover, parents who don’t believe secondary school kids need vaccinations complicate the situation further. Although that was not apparently the case in this particular instance.
Fate Deprived a Healthy Girl of Her Opportunity and Life
The United Kingdom began rolling out vaccines for healthy 12- to 15-year-olds on September 20, 2021. Medical professionals are now providing them at schools where parental consent is required, and the young girl from Portsmouth was due to have her shot. But on that very same day she contracted the virus.
Next, she developed severe symptoms, including myocarditis – inflammation of the heart – within a couple days. This is a rare side-effect of COVID-19 among healthy teens, but it can still happen. The loss of her young potential saddens us. It’s a timely reminder there are real people behind the mind-numbing numbers.
Senior Doctors Confirm School Kids Need Vaccine Shots Now
The Guardian advises the pressure is now on for secondary school children to consider getting vaccinated against COVID. They need to be aware a perfectly healthy, 15-year-old can fall ill, develop severe complications, and even die.
Dr. Helen Salisbury is a general practitioner, and member of the Independent Sage Committee advising UK government. But she fears ‘a combination of half-hearted endorsement in the age group, and stretched services risk further delaying vaccinations in teenagers’.
Sending children back to school without masks, extra ventilation, bubbles and isolation policies make no sense at all, she explains. ‘I don’t understand why we are not getting on with it. Because we should have started in the summer.’ Secondary school kids need their vaccinations.
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