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A judge in the Netherlands has ruled that a 12-year-old boy can be administered a Covid vaccine against the wishes of his father. The unnamed boy in the city of Groningen had argued that he needed a vaccine to safely visit his dying grandmother.
Children aged 12 to 17 in the Netherlands can choose to be vaccinated but need permission from both parents. In this case, the boy’s parents were divorced and only his mother agreed. Dutch law says judges can make decisions in the best interests of children if their parents cannot agree.
The boy wanted to be vaccinated because he did not want to get infected and wanted to limit the chance of infecting others.
On top of this, his grandmother is suffering from metastatic lung cancer and is in the final stages of her life.
More than 123,000 deaths have been prevented in England by Covid vaccinations, according to figures calculated by Public Health England and Cambridge University.
About 23.9 million infections have also been prevented by the vaccine rollout, along with 230,800 hospital admissions among people aged 45 and over, according to the calculations, which cover the period up to 17 September.