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Pressure is mounting on the UK’s Vaccine Advisory Group to recommend second doses of Covid-19 vaccines for healthy teenagers after new research showed the benefits “clearly outweigh” the risks.

The analysis, published Thursday in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, found that any weekly infection rate in the 12-17 age group over 30 per 100,000 people would tip the equation in favor of hospital vaccination and preventing the long-term Covid-19 virus.

The number of cases this year has not yet fallen below this level and in mid-September it was 680 cases per 100,000 between 10 and 19 years old.

The UK’s Joint Committee on Immunization and Immunization approved the first doses of Covid-19 vaccines for children aged 16 to 17 in early August, but it overran the approval of the second doses due to concerns about rare cases of acute carditis.

The Joint International Committee is due to meet on Thursday morning and said a decision on the second doses is expected in the coming weeks.

However, the analysis, conducted by researchers from Sage’s independent scientific committee, found that even if the number of weekly cases were reduced to 50 per 100,000, the vaccines would still prevent 75 more cases of vaccine-related myocarditis from hospitalization. .

If the number of weekly cases rises to 1,000 per 100,000, the analysis indicates that the teen’s second doses would prevent more than 4,400 cases from being hospitalized.

Deepti Gordasani, an epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London who led the analysis, said the results showed full vaccination was “guaranteed” for all children aged 12 to 17 in England.

The delta variant has an “increased risk”, said Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London and a member of the government’s advisory group on new and emerging respiratory virus threats, which means that a single dose “almost certainly does not provide appropriate offers of protection”. Also for young people.

Maggie Wermouth, a JCVI member and general practitioner, told the Financial Times that the committee needed “really good evidence” before it would approve second doses for healthy teens.

“We need very strong data that completely convinced us that it will benefit as much as it will benefit the rest of the population,” she said.