Covid in children with Greg Zimet and Amanda Kvalsvig

Deep Breath In

As the scientific community in the UK still debates whether to vaccinate kids under 16, that leaves us as an outlier to the rest of the world where parents are being encouraged to seek the vaccination of the children. In this episode Tom, Jenny and Navjoyt discuss the questions that they're getting in their surgeries, and get some advice on how parents regard vaccinating their children, how to think about transmissibility vs severity when it comes to childrens' risk, and some ways of helping to motivate vaccine uptake. Our guests; Amanda Kvalsvig is a senior research fellow at the University of Otago, and her work as an epidemiologist has helped to inform the New Zealand government's covid-19 response. Greg Zimet is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Indiana University. His work has focussed on vaccination in children - particularly the HPV vaccine. Further reading Covid-19 vaccines for teenagers: conversations and consent https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2312