How 12 to 15 year olds were approved to be vaccinated in less than 1 day
In mid-August 2021, the government's vaccination advisory group discussed 12 to 15 year olds in a late night email chain & within hours it became their official recommendation.
The short answer to ‘how’ for this short history is: because government and media commentators willed it.
But heck I’ll give you the long answer too.
Medsafe granted provisional approval for Pfizer’s application for use in the 12 to 15 year olds age group in June 2021 - conditional on Pfizer continuing to provide data from its clinical trials.
When it was announced at a press briefing then Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the, ”…technical advisory group had no concerns about the efficacy and safety of the Pfizer vaccine for the 12- to 15-year-olds.”
His statement at best, is misinformed and at worse, he was outright lying.
Approving vaccination for high priority 12 to 15 year olds
On the 4th of August 2021 the Covid Vaccination Technical Advisory Group (CV-TAG) issued a memo that approved the Pfizer vaccination only for priority groups within that age band, such as, “…severe neuro-disabilities that require residential care, and those who are about to undergo long-term immunosuppression, such as solid organ transplant candidates prior to transplant.”
The priority groups included some other provisions, like living with someone at high risk of severe Covid outcomes, but routine vaccination of that age group wasn’t yet recommended.
The memo listed 3 meeting dates, the 20th of July, the 27th of July, and the 3rd of August, where CV-TAG had discussed the priority groups and finalising their recommendation.
In each of those 3 meetings, prior to discussing 12 to 15 year olds, they discussed the specific risk of myocarditis and extending dosing intervals for that reason (and the longer intervals seemed to give a better immune response too - surely the entire point of vaccination).
The minutes show agreement that the focus of vaccination needed to be on adults not children, hence just the priority groups in that age band. And safety was a concern to them, they even suggested a trial on using just 1 dose for that reason:
If they discussed or mentioned the specific caveat that the provisional approval was ‘conditional on Pfizer continuing to provide data from its clinical trials’ - I haven’t found it in meeting minutes or memos.
Their 4th of August memo ended:
Here’s the email chain from an OIA (I’ve included a link at the bottom to the full OIA) which 8 days later constituted a, “…review of emerging information on several issues.”
The email chain that led to 12 to 15 year olds being vaccinated
At 9.11pm on the 12th of August 2021 an email was sent by the Chair of the CV-TAG, Chief Science Advisor Ian Town to the advisory group:
I’m curious why Bloomfield was in the email chain - he received their recommendations but did not attend their meetings. And why did Town call it out? What does that mean - watch what you say?
In an 11.12pm email response to Town, CV-TAG member Peter McIntyre called it ‘inevitable’ that the age group would be offered vaccination - which is also a good summing up of what the chain contained. Particularly as they don’t definitively discuss any actual benefits that 12 to 15 year olds gain for themselves from being vaccinated.
An 8.08am email response the following morning by member Elizabeth Wilson sums up sentiment:
Member Nikki Turner in an 8.17am email response notes opening up the age group to vaccination could support equity, but with little gain on herd immunity (what is the point of equity then exactly?):
At 10.05am member Tony Wall agrees, with caveats:
It’s overall a somewhat…academic discussion, preoccupied with how Covid vaccination will affect other, especially school-based, vaccinations.
The chain had a couple of references to herd or community immunity, and as Elizabeth Wilson had added, vaccination could ‘help overall numbers’.
This angle of children taking on actions to protect others is familiar to me from the usual media commentators who pushed masking on school children - and justified it in case they suffered trauma from murdering their teacher. Read it - they really said that.
At 11.11am on the 13th of August lead science advisor at the Ministry of Health, Fiona Callaghan thanks the advisory group for their feedback and says she’ll start a memo.
Later that same day, the world’s shortest memo is produced - presumably just in time for the afternoon Zoom meeting Town had with Vaccine Ministers.
This is all it contained:
The above point 5 made in the memo on school disruption is curious. Town’s opening email remarks mentioned that in Australia younger people were being ‘adversely affected’ by Covid.
I assume he meant what group member Nikki Moreland had raised at 10.14am:
So they were missing school due to themselves or others testing positive for Covid (and were required to isolate) - not due to them suffering poor health outcomes.
The same day as the memo and email chain, a news article was running that began, “The Government is expected to announce in the next few weeks whether 12- to 15-year-olds will be vaccinated against Covid-19.”
I guess we can change ‘next few weeks’ to ‘next few hours after we contacted them for comment for the article and they thought they might be criticised’.
The piece had the usual media commentators calling for 12 to 15 year olds to be vaccinated, and quoted then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, “As many of us around the table are parents we want to be able to stand in front of other parents and say we made the best decision possible that the children based on expert advice.”
(That garbled statement is exactly what she said.)
The quote went on, “Our decision will be absolutely based on the advice of experts and we are not going to make a decision that [is] solely about whether it improves the logistics or ease of our roll-out. That is not our consideration.”
While the Prime Minister said the decision wouldn’t be based on logistics, Town had said in his original email that he had been talking to Bloomfield and they both thought that the opening of the centralised Covid vaccine booking system was a good reason to recommend 12 to 15 year olds get vaccinated!
Their memo went to Cabinet to approve and 12 to 15 year olds became eligible to be vaccinated from the 1st of September 2021.
1 dose & dosing intervals
The discussion of 1 dose within the email chain was pertinent - the day Town sent the late night email, Bloomfield had announced the dosing interval was extended from 3 to 6 weeks. Again, the interval was largely due to safety concerns.
Which was also the reason for the 1 dose recommendation. This age group were at vanishingly small risk of poor Covid outcomes, and may have been able to generate an immune response with less risk, by using 1 rather than 2 doses.
Despite 1 dose being later recommended by CV-TAG, especially for the purpose of mandates and domestic vaccine passes, 1 dose for under 18s was never implemented.
In early October just after a national vaccination target that would loosen Covid restrictions was announced - the interval was moved back to 3 weeks.
Here’s the full OIA response with the emails: