Children Urgently Need Sinovac Jabs: Govt Adviser

A government adviser on Covid-19 vaccines, Lau Yu-lung, on Monday called on the authorities to quickly arrange outreach teams to give Sinovac jabs to children.

Bookings for children as young as three can be made from Tuesday and Lau said shots should also be administered at kindergartens and primary schools, although face-to-face classes and on-campus activities are currently suspended.

Lau said because the pandemic has led to class suspensions in the past two years, children may have had a lower chance of getting infected with four older types of coronavirus.

Such infections might have provided cross-immunity, and the lack of this may be the reason why some young children who get Covid-19 become seriously sick.

He said there's no scientific data to support giving the BioNTech jab to young children, but millions of kids around the world have received Sinovac shots.

"The testing data on those aged 3 - 5 for BioNTech's manufacturer, Pfizer, was unsatisfactory, it wasn't good enough to support [using it]. So the Food and Drug Administration of the US wanted to administer the jabs on those children without the data, but there's still a delay," he told an RTHK programme.

Lau, who is a paediatrics scholar at the University of Hong Kong, said Sinovac has an indisputable safety record, and it's proven to be able to prevent serious illness and death.

With local hospitals now overstretched due to the large number of Covid patients, the scholar said young children who test positive for the virus may be better off staying at home.

Lau said young children may be more prone to psychological trauma if they are sent to unfamiliar surroundings on their own.

He proposed letting children recover at home and have private doctors check on them every day via video link.