Immunising children with Covid-19 vaccine ‘could help in protecting the elderly’
Experts believe coronavirus vaccine may not work for older people.
Immunising children with Covid-19 vaccine, even though they are at low risk the disease, could be an “indirect” way to protect older people for whom the vaccine may not be as effective, scientists have said.
Speaking at the Lords Science and Technology Committee, Prof Peter Openshaw, from Imperial College London, said: “Sometimes it is possible to protect a vulnerable group by targeting another group and this, for example, is being done with influenza.
“In the past few years, the UK has been at the forefront of rolling out the live attenuated vaccine for children.”
He added that vaccinating health and care workers, who are most likely to have contact with older people, would also help in protecting them from Covid-19.
Prof Openshaw, who is a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), added: “We’re actually considering a paper at Nervtag this week which is about targeting of different sub-populations with vaccines.”
Professor Arne Akbar, president of the British Society of Immunology, who also gave evidence at the committee, said: “Vaccines don’t work very well in older people.
“This has been shown with many other vaccines in the past.
“One thing that’s apparent, even in healthy older people, is that there’s more inflammation all around the body.
“We need to understand where that inflammation is coming from.
“And this baseline inflammation in older people is linked to frailty and many negative outcomes as we get older.
“And this seems to be exacerbated when you get a severe infection like Covid-19.”
He suggested that older people could be offered dexamethasone, which has recently shown strong results in those severely ill with Covid-19, alongside a vaccine.
Prof Akbar added: “Just a vaccine alone will help the younger people, and that will be good because then, if the younger people are not infected, they will not spread it to the older people – but it won’t directly help the older group very much.”
