HEALTH CHIEFS across Hertfordshire and west Essex are drawing up plans to vaccinate ALL primary school children, it has emerged.

Nationally the government has already backed advice for children aged five to 11 who are in a clinical risk group – or who live with someone who is immuno-suppressed – to be offered the vaccination.

Now – in a report submitted to a joint meeting of the area’s clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) – it has emerged local health chiefs are already making plans to immunise healthy five to 11-year-olds too.

But they would only be implemented if wholesale vaccination of primary age children was authorised nationally.

Following the meeting, Beverley Flowers, deputy CEO Herts Valleys, West Essex and East & North Hertfordshire CCGs, said: “Vaccinating a new group of children of this size will be a considerable undertaking, so we are making plans to ensure that we can move quickly if and when the JCVI advises this.”