Denmark banned the COVID vaccine for children under 18– Fact Check

Did Denmark ban COVID-19 vaccination for people under 50 and children under 18? True or False.

There is alleged news that Denmark banned the COVID-19 vaccine for children under 18 or people under 50. Is this true? It is false.

The disinformation that Denmark banned COVID-19 vaccines for youth under 18 went viral on social media. Many believed that the ban was evidence that vaccines are dangerous.

The “fake news” was not really made out of whole cloth. Rather, it stemmed from a misunderstanding by some people and then spread on social media.

The Danish Health Authority did not say anything about the COVID-19 vaccine for the Omicron variant being dangerous. However, some people, when they heard the news that Denmark had stopped offering vaccination to people under 50, including minors and children, jumped to the conclusion that the reason why it did this was that the vaccine is dangerous.

According to the Danish Health Authority, the target groups of people offered vaccination this fall are as follows:

• People aged 50 years or over
• People under the age of 50 who are at risk of becoming seriously sick (based on a personal assessment)
• Pregnant women
• Staff in the elder care, health, and medical sector and those in social services who come in contact with high-risk patients
• Families of people at high risk

As you can see, the Danish Health Authority is offering vaccination to people who are at high risk of becoming seriously sick or people who must avoid contracting COVID-19 even if they are under the age of 50.

If the Danish Health Authority believed that the COVID-19 vaccine was dangerous, it would not offer the vaccination to these people in the first place.

The Danish government is not banning the COVID-19 vaccine for children and people under 50.

It offers vaccination to children and people under the age of 50 if they are at risk of becoming seriously ill. It also offers the vaccine to pregnant women, families of people at high risk, and workers in certain sectors such as health care and medicine.

So, there is no way that the Danish government is banning the vaccine or considers vaccination to be dangerous.

It will announce guidelines as to which groups aged under 50 will receive vaccination. The Danish Health Authority is also offering influenza vaccination this fall to people aged 65 or over.

From July 2022, vaccination was no longer offered for youth under 18 and children, including the first injection. The reason is that the authority concluded that children rarely become seriously ill from COVID-19. (The vaccine is still offered to those under 18 based on an individual medical assessment from a doctor.)

・The Danish government stopped offering COVID-19 vaccination to people under the age of 50, including children, because it is very rare that members of this age group become seriously ill. – True

・The Danish government banned the COVID-19 vaccination for children and people under 50. – False