Raj Bhopal: No trials, no research has been done on vaccinating children, so all the trials have recruited people 16 and above, mostly 18 and above. Very few trials have included people over 80 either, but the side effects of these vaccines are very common, including fever, high fever, so we would not want to have a lot of children with high fever when the disease hardly affects them, and we still don’t know whether the vaccine stops transmission from person to person, so trials are starting in children. In the next couple of years, we may well find that there is good evidence that we can stop transmission from children to adults and then there will be a case whether we should ask children to be vaccinated and whether parents will accept their children being vaccinated, not necessarily for their own benefit, perhaps it’s some small risk to themselves, but for the benefit of society.
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