‘Time has come’ for the UK to routinely vaccinate babies against chickenpox, scientists say

The ‘time has come’ for every baby in Britain to receive a chickenpox vaccine, experts claimed today.

For decades, ministers have brushed aside calls for children to be routinely vaccinated against the completely preventable disease.

But new evidence has now prompted new pleas for the government to reconsider.

Danish academics found that vaccinating children against chickenpox “significantly” reduces cases and deaths in both children.

Such a program would also benefit adults by protecting them from shingles, they claim.

Yet government advisers have said the opposite, expressing concern that this could lead to more cases of shingles – an acutely painful skin rash – in adults.

However, recent studies have suggested that vaccinating children might not increase shingles rates, with some even showing that children vaccinated against chickenpox had a lower risk of developing the condition.

While usually harmless, chickenpox can in rare cases lead to life-threatening complications, including sepsis, pneumonia, and brain damage.

Each year in the UK, more than 20 people die from the disease and hundreds of babies are hospitalized due to severe symptoms.

If approved for children, it can be given alongside the mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which is given at 12 to 15 months of age.

Experts at Aarhus University Hospital modeled the effects of six different types of vaccination strategies against none at all.

Compared with no schedule, giving two doses of a vaccine to children reduced chickenpox cases by up to 96 percent.

Hospital admissions were also reduced by up to 94 percent and deaths by up to 92 percent over a 50-year period.

The vaccine also reduced the number of shingles — reactivated cases of the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox — by 9 percent.

Write in the journal PLOS Global public healthsaid researchers, “All six short- and medium-interval strategies were cost-effective compared to no vaccination.”

But of the six, scientists found it most effective to give a child a first dose at 15 months old, and again at four.

Researchers used a ‘dynamic transmission model’ for their study, which means that they also looked at the effect of further transmission to others.

This is especially important with diseases such as chickenpox, where getting vaccinated means you cannot get infected and therefore cannot infect others.

The vaccines considered in the study were live attenuated virus vaccines, into which a modified form of the virus was injected. As it multiplies in the body, it generates a long-lasting, high-quality immune response.

Still, as with any modeling study, the researchers cautioned that there were potential shortcomings.

Dr. Peter English, former chair of the British Medical Association Public Health Medicine Committee, said: ‘This modeling paper from Denmark, a country very similar to the UK in many ways, finds that universal varicella vaccination is cost-effective.

“This supports the idea that it is time to add it to the UK vaccination schedule.”

A vaccine against chickenpox has been available since 1984.

Currently the shots are only available on the NHS for some adults and children, such as those who are not immune and are in close contact with someone with a weakened immune system.

It’s available privately in pharmacies such as Boots and Superdrug for around £65 per dose – two are needed – and in private clinics.

Plans to launch a vaccination campaign were shelved at the start of the Covid pandemic after advisers were instructed to set new priorities.

Similar discussions took place in 2010, but were shot down by pundits concerned that such a campaign would not be cost-effective.

Countries such as the US, Japan and Germany already routinely offer children chickenpox shots.