On May 5, Health Canada approved a COVID-19 vaccine for use in children aged 12-15 years. The United States Food and Drug Administration quickly followed suit, and other countries are likely to do the same. Similar approvals for younger children are on the horizon.
This is very welcome news. It will not be possible to achieve full protection against COVID-19 at the population level unless most adolescents and children are vaccinated. However, factors such as vaccine hesitancy and mistaken beliefs about the risks COVID-19 poses to children may make this a challenging goal.
One tool that may serve to encourage vaccination uptake is vaccine mandates.
As philosophical researchers, we offer three ethical arguments in favour of making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for children, based on our research. We contend it would be ethically permissible for governments to impose a sanction (such as a fine or exclusion from social environments or activities) on those who fail to vaccinate their children. Risk of harm to children
Argument one: If there is an easy, low-cost way for parents or guardians to avoid exposing children in their care to substantial risk of harm and death, they ought to do so.
COVID-19 presents a substantial risk of harm?including long-term health complications such as organ damage, long COVID, or multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) and death?to at least some proportion of children. We have limited knowledge about how large the at-risk group is and who is in i...