France to vaccinate those aged 12-to-18 against Covid starting in mid-June, Macron says

In less than two weeks’ time, children as young as 12 in France can get vaccinated against Covid-19, President Emmanuel Macron has said after the EU’s drug regulator approved Pfizer-BioNTech’s jab for younger teenagers.

“We decided this morning, from June 15 to start opening the vaccination for adolescents, the youngest, and from June 15, to allow 12–18-year-olds to go to be vaccinated,” Macron told BFM TV on Wednesday.

Macron said more details would be announced in the coming days.

France’s Health Minister Olivier Veran confirmed that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would be used when inoculating children.

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He stressed that vaccinations would be on a “voluntary basis” and that children would “not be able to be vaccinated without parental consent.”

The announcement comes after the European Medicines Agency last week gave its approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s ‘Comirnaty’ Covid-19 vaccine for use in children aged 12 to 15.

The US-German jab is the first authorized for children by the EU’s regulator, which based its decision on the results of a US study of around 2,000 children that found the vaccine to be safe and effective.

A number of other countries have also announced they will press ahead with rolling out the jab to children as young as 12, including the US and most recently Poland, which announced its decision on Tuesday.

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