Calls to make vaccines available to children over 12 in Lancashire
The Director of Public Health in Blackburn with Darwen wants to get the region's children vaccinated too.
There are calls for children over the age of 12 in Lancashire to be allowed to get vaccinated.
The Director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen is urging the government to approve the Pfizer vaccine for over 12-year-olds.
Dominic Harrisons says it would help to tackle the latest increase in infections in the borough.
The borough continues to have the highest rate in England with 653 new cases in the seven days to May 28, the equivalent of 436.2 cases per 100,000 people.
He's been vocal on Twitter about the need to vaccinate the younger generation, saying:
"USA , Canada and EU have now approved Pfizer-BioNTech jab for 12 + year olds
"Please could the #UK get a bit of a move on with this?"
It's something the MP for Blackburn agrees with. Kate Hollern told us:
"We need a Twickenham-style vaccination programme in Blackburn urgently. The Government made over 10,000 vaccines available over the weekend in Twickenham but will only provide Blackburn with 14,000 additional vaccines over two weeks - despite the request for more.
"The rapidly spreading infection in Blackburn is a direct result of the Government's failure to prioritise areas with the higher rates.
"With three weeks to go until restrictions are lifted, if the Government surge vaccinates according to need I see no reason why businesses in Blackburn cannot re-open fully. Our businesses have been under additional restrictions for longer than almost anywhere else in the country and many of them won't survive another lockdown.
"The Government must also address the fact that the spread of the Indian variant is more rapid amongst under-18s in Blackburn. It should set out its plans to make vaccines available for them."
Dominic Harrison also says the focus on age and vulnerability has discounted those most at risk of infection:
"We wrote in February saying as we went into lockdown lifting it's highly likely that Blackburn with Darwen and other areas of high transmission risk will have rates that rise more quickly as there's more social interaction between people. We felt that was obvious. Of course it's turned out that way.
"What we asked for to counter that or at least to create a level playing field in those areas was to accelerate the rollout of the vaccination. Now in February the government said it didn't want to do that, it wanted to roll the vaccine out at the same rate across every local authority area in England prioritising by age.
"Our argument against that was, well we agree with that prioritisiation but we think it needs to go faster if we've got the higher risk of rates rising because some areas such as the South West region for instance at that time in February had half the death rate and three times less transmission.
"Protection from the vaccine isn't just if you're old or vulnerable, but the protection is of course if you get infected in the first place.
"If you've got three times more chance of being infected in the first place then rolling out the vaccine equally isn't meeting the need of the population. It isn't giving a level playing field to everybody in the country.
"So places like Blackburn are at substantially higher risk of higher spread with variants and really need more protection from vaccination."