Disabled children in the UK aged five to 11 will soon be offered the coronavirus vaccine.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has recommended the rollout, which will include children with autism.
Contact campaigns manager Una Summerson said the vaccine rollout to disabled children has offered families a way out of lockdown
The latest rollout will also include booster jabs for all at-risk 12 to 15-year-olds and all 16 to 17-year-olds.
The latest moves follow the JVCI’s advice in September to extend vaccines from 12 to 15-year-old children with severe, profound and multiple learning disabilities to those with autism.
Threatening legal action
Charity Contact a Family represents the families of disabled children.
The organisation had highlighted how some families were threatening legal action over access to the vaccine.
The JCVI has recommended that the jabs are offered “immediately”.
Una Summerson is Contact’s campaigns manager.
She said she was “delighted” the JCVI listened to its campaign and thousands of “neglected” families who had shielded for the past 22 months.
Vaccine offers ‘route out’ of lockdown
Summerson said the decision offers the families a “route out” of lockdown, as many have had to keep their children off school for nearly two years.
On Contact’s Facebook page, families have told of their joy at the news.
‘Tears of joy’
Jemma Francis wrote of how she “cried hysterical tears of joy”.
She said the decision was a “complete game changer” for her two youngest sons.
Francis said their lives had been a “living hell for almost two years”.
Health secretary Sajid Javid said supplies of the Pfizer vaccine that will be offered to five to 11-year-olds will arrive in the UK from mid-January.
He said: “This is a national mission and we urge everybody to play their part by getting their vaccines and booster doses as soon as possible.”
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Published: 4 January 2022
