Sweden stops recommending covid-19 vaccine for children
The Public Health Authority has stopped recommending Healthy children between the ages of 12 and 17 receive the covid-19 vaccine.
The general recommendation that healthy children ages 12 to 17 receive the Covid-19 vaccine ended after Oct. 31, the agency said in a revision published this weekend.
It cited the “very low risk of serious illness and death from covid-19” in children and teenagers for the change. After October 31, vaccination will only be recommended for certain children in vulnerable groups.
Sören Andersson, an official at the Health Authority, developed the rule change for broadcasters SVT and said that “we see that the need for care as a result of covid-19 has been low among children and young people during the pandemic” and added that the need for vaccines has “declined since the virus variant omicron started to spread.”
“In this phase of the pandemic, we do not see that there is a continued need for vaccination in this group,” continued Andersson.
For people over 18, the health authority is still recommend three vaccine doses. Four doses are recommended for people over 65.
Unlike most other countries, Sweden refused to implement draconian covid-19 lockdowns. Data and studies have showed that the highly developed Scandinavian nation may have experienced less damage from the virus and lockdowns compared to nations that implemented these measures.
After seeing a relatively high death toll at the beginning of the pandemic, Sweden now sees fewer deaths per capita than the European average, according to the AFP news agency.
Denmark is changing vaccines
In neighboring Denmark, authorities issued a similar rule change and will not offer people under 50 any more covid-19 vaccine boosters.
“The purpose of vaccination is not to prevent infection with covid-19, and people under the age of 50 are therefore not currently offered booster vaccination,” the country’s health authority wrote in a statement on September 13.
Denmark has also explicitly dropped all claims to stop the spread of covid-19, saying it will focus on protecting vulnerable individuals from developing severe symptoms.
Individuals under the age of 50, It said, “generally do not have a significantly higher risk of becoming seriously ill” from the virus. At the same time, younger people are also “well protected against becoming seriously ill” and a “very large number of them have already been vaccinated and previously infected”, according to the authority.
The UK Health Security Agency said around the same time that children who had not turned 5 by the end of August would not be offered the vaccine.