The late night email chain that led to 12 to 15 year olds being vaccinated
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.
An OIA request in March 2024 asked why some OIA responses are published on the Ministry of Health website and some are not.
The Ministry of Health responded in late April “Openness and transparency are critical drivers of public trust and confidence in government and promote active participation and engagement from the public”.
Yet went on to say “Responses to OIA requests are made available by Manatū Hauora [sic] with the principle of availability in mind “that the information shall be made available unless there is good reason for withholding it” (their italics).
This post was originally published in July 2023 based on an OIA that was never published on the Ministry of Health website.
How 12 to 15 year olds were approved to be vaccinated
Medsafe granted provisional approval for Pfizer’s application for use in the 12 to 15 year old age group in June 2021. It was conditional on Pfizer continuing to provide data from its clinical trials.
At a 21st of June press conference where the approval was announced, then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern boldly said "The government is likely to give the final sign-off later this month after considering advice from the Ministry of Health”.
Ardern confirmed that the 265,000 children in that age bracket were already included in the existing Pfizer purchase orders for 2 shots each.
Then Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield chimed in to add the ”…technical advisory group had no concerns about the efficacy and safety of the Pfizer vaccine for the 12- to 15-year-olds”.
Based on documents and emails Bloomfield’s statement appears…misinformed.
Approving vaccination for high priority 12 to 15 year olds
It wasn’t until the 4th of August 2021 meeting that the Ministry of Health’s Covid Vaccination Technical Advisory Group (CV-TAG) issued a memo which approved Pfizer vaccination only for priority groups within that 12 to 15 year age band. The priority group was those with “…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 discussed these priority groups to finalise their recommendation.
In each of those 3 meetings, prior to discussing 12 to 15 year olds, CV-TAG discussed the specific risk of myocarditis and extending the interval between the 1st and 2nd dose to mitigate that risk. The longer interval seemed to give a better immune response too - which was surely the entire point of vaccination.
Safety was a concern to the group, they even suggested starting a trial with just 1 dose:
The minutes also show agreement that the focus of vaccination needed to be on adults not children, hence just the priority groups in that age band.
Neither the minutes nor memo discussed or mentioned the caveat that provisional approval was ‘conditional on Pfizer continuing to provide data from its clinical trials’ as per the original Medsafe approval.
Their 4th of August memo ended:
Yet 8 days later it was a late night email chain that appeared to constitute their promised ‘…review of emerging information on several issues’ that they claimed their recommendation would be based on.
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:
Bloomfield was in the email chain. While he received CV-TAG recommendations he was not a CV-TAG member nor did he attend their meetings. Why did Town call it out that he was lurking in the email chain?
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 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:
At 10.05am member Tony Wall agrees, with caveats:
It’s overall a somewhat academic discussion, preoccupied with how Covid vaccination will affect other 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’.
(Children taking on actions to protect others is familiar from the usual Otago University media commentators who pushed masking on school children - and justified it as it was better to mask than to suffer trauma from murdering their teachers!)
At 11.11am on the 13th of August lead science advisor at the Ministry of Health, Fiona Callaghan thanks the 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.
Town was likely referring to what CV-TAG member Nikki Moreland raised at 10.14am:
12 to 15 year olds were missing school due to testing positive for Covid or being a contact of someone who had Covid - and then were required to isolate. Hence the disruption. It wasn’t that they were suffering from poor medical outcomes from Covid per se.
The same day as this memo and email chain, a news article began “The Government is expected to announce in the next few weeks whether 12- to 15-year-olds will be vaccinated against Covid-19.”
The article had the usual media commentators calling for 12 to 15 year olds to be vaccinated, and quoted 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.” (The 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 Ardern said the decision wouldn’t be based on logistics, Town 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!
The 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 same day Town sent the late night email, Bloomfield announced the dosing interval was being extended from 3 to 6 weeks. The interval change was largely due to safety concerns.
Which was also the reason for the 1 dose recommendation in this age group who were at little 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 in the face of mandates and domestic vaccine passes (which applied to anyone over 12 years and 3 months) - 1 dose for under 18s was never implemented.
On the 6th of October just after a national vaccination target and domestic vaccination passes were announced - the interval between doses was moved back to 3 weeks. The day before the press conference announcing the change, Town gave an update at the start of the CV-TAG meeting stating ‘it has been agreed’ to lower the interval between doses to 3 weeks instead of the recommended 6 weeks. But the meeting minutes of that meeting and previous meetings don’t show any discussion of changing their recommendation.
The last discussion of dosing intervals was at the previous 12th of September meeting where the group expressed concern that their advice wasn’t being followed on the 6 week interval. They agreed they needed to re-share their statement on the benefit of this longer dosing interval.
Since that time of mandates and restrictions based on 2 doses - at some point in early 2024 the guidance for 12 to 15 years olds was updated from 2 doses at least 8 weeks apart to only 1 dose of the updated Pfizer Covid vaccine.
The OIA response that was never published on the Ministry of Health website:
Horse face killer needs to be in jail like yesterday!