No sacred cows / All hail the chickenpox vaccine! |
Toby Young has narrated this article for you to listen to.
On 1 January, the NHS announced it would be including a chickenpox vaccine in the bundle of inoculations given to one-year-olds, henceforth known as the MMRV, where V stands for varicella. Most people in my circle reacted badly to this news, having become vaccine sceptics after the overselling of the Covid jabs, but not me. Twenty years ago I lobbied the government to do just this. I don’t think people realise how dangerous chicken-pox can be – and not just for adults.
Two days after my son Ludo was born, Caroline discovered a spot on her chest that her mum quickly diagnosed as chickenpox. That wasn’t great for Caroline, who began to feel unwell, but it was potentially deadly for Ludo, because there was a chance she’d passed on the virus to him via her placenta in the seven-day window between first becoming infected and producing antibodies. Newborns don’t have fully developed immune systems, so if she’d passed on the virus in that window there was a 1 to 5 per cent mortality risk, rising to 20 to 30 per cent if it wasn’t treated.
They were both admitted to University College Hospital and placed in an isolated........