Chickenpox vaccine to be made available on NHS

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, pint-sized pop diva Sabuna Carpenter is back with her seventh studio album. Stay tuned to find out what our reviewer thought of the star's latest release.

0:34but first an nhs vaccine for chicken pox will be rolled out in england from january in the biggest expansion of the childhood immunization program for a decade currently the chicken pox vaccine also known as the varicella jab costs around 150 pounds at private clinics and pharmacies. It will now be offered as part of a new combined MMRV vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella and varicella by GPs. The health security agency said the vaccination will be available for babies aged between 12 and 18 months and is expected to protect around 500 ,000 every year. The rollout of the vaccine is also expected to save the NHS £15 million a year in costs for treating the illness.

1:22And according to the Department of Health and Social Care, chickenpox causes an estimated£24 million in lost income and productivity every year in the UK. Here's Health Minister Stephen Kinnock speaking today on BBC Breakfast about the benefits of the new jab. We know contracting chickenpox later on in life can be quite dangerous. us. It's great for schools because and for other educational settings because the kids will be there with their classmates learning and getting the best possible start in life. It's great for parents because we all know those of us who are parents that there's sometimes a need to scramble for childcare, take days off work and it's great for actually for the economy because it will improve people's ability to produce and contribute to our economy because they'll be at work rather than having to scramble for childcare.

2:13According to the World Health Organization, the target for vaccination uptake among children in order to achieve herd immunity is 95%. But figures from 2024 to 2025, released by the UK Health Security Agency on Thursday, show that no childhood vaccine has met this requirement. Experts are warning that England needs to wake up to its wavering infant vaccination programme as one in five children start primary school unprotected from serious infectious disease. Joining us now is Professor Helen Bedford from the UCL Institute of Child Health. So Helen, what's your response to this news? Well, this is very good news for the health of our children.

2:56We're a bit behind the curve, actually, in terms of introducing a vaccine against chickenpox. about 45 other countries already do this routinely, including North America, Australia, and quite a few European countries. So this is yet another vaccine that's being introduced in the childhood vaccine schedule and will help protect children against this infection. This product has been used in many other countries, so we know that it's very effective and has a very good safety profile. For most children with chickenpox, it's usually a mild infection, but for about one in a hundred children, there may be more serious consequences.

3:37So the sort of complications that you can get with chickenpox include skin infections. So the bacteria sort of get in where the spots are and can cause nasty bacterial infections, which can result in sepsis and other things include pneumonia, inflammation of the brain. So it can be very nasty and children who have these complications can be left with lifelong problems. And how concerned are you about vaccine scepticism hindering the potential positive impact of this jab? Pretty positive about acceptance of vaccination in this country actually. When we do surveys of parents, the overwhelming majority have their children immunised and feel confident about vaccination.

4:23But what we do see is that vaccination uptake varies quite a lot around the country. So there are pockets where uptake is much lower and tends to be particularly in inner cities. So for example, London has the poorest uptake in the country, with some areas there, notably City and Hackney district having very low uptake. But the overall picture is that most parents do have their children vaccinated. What sort of barriers stop people getting vaccinated? We know from a lot of research that's been done that some of the important things are that low vaccination goes hand in hand with poverty. We hear all the time that families are really struggling financially and it can be just a step too far almost for some parents to take time off work if they're working.

5:14They may not get paid for that time off. And to take their children to be vaccinated, that might involve a journey, bus journey. Maybe they can't afford the bus fare. So things like that can really be a barrier for many families. But also in a city like London, it's a very busy city, a lot of population churns, so families moving in, moving out very quickly. All these things can cause problems in terms of getting vaccinated, in knowing what's due, how to go about getting it, actually getting to the appointment. All these things can be very important. and on top of that we do know that there has been an increase in parents having questions about vaccination since the pandemic and this is good we want people to ask questions but it's not always easy for parents to know the best place to get the answers to those questions and that will be undoubtedly NHS healthcare workers because we know that parents trust what they say but again we're short of resources.

6:19There's been a huge decrease in numbers of health visitors over the last 10 years by about 40%. So healthcare workers aren't always quite so readily available for parents to answer their questions. So how should we tackle vaccine hesitancy? Basically, if you give a vaccine to a child, it protects that child. But if enough children are vaccinated in a community, you get what is known as herd immunity or community immunity. and that means the disease can't spread. Its spread is very reduced. By having that sort of level of immunity, it protects people who can't be vaccinated. So for example, thinking about chickenpox, the first dose of the vaccine will be offered at 12 months, but children under 12 months can still catch chickenpox and often be very ill with it.

7:08If enough children are vaccinated and the disease becomes very uncommon, those young babies will be protected by the community immunity. But also other people. Chickenpox can be very serious in pregnancy and also can be very serious in adulthood. So adults can be really sick with chickenpox, often needing to be admitted to hospital. Why is it so important for a significant proportion of the population to be vaccinated? The most important way of tackling it is almost individually, having individual conversations with parents who have concerns or questions. But we also need to get a bit better at communicating to groups in the community who may not be able to have access to the resources that are already available.

7:54It may not be in their language or they may not fully understand it. And there's been a lot of success in a lot of areas producing things like videos for parents who may not have English as a first language, often fronted by somebody from their own community, because that's a really important way of communicating, hearing a message, a strong message that vaccination is recommended from a member of your community or somebody that you can identify with.

8:28Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, alongside producer Jack Antonoff, Sabrina Carpenter is back with a new album, but does it live up to the hype? We'll see you back here in just a moment.

8:58Welcome back. It's been a big news week for American singer-songwriters as Sabrina Carpenter's new record is out today. The playful pop princess has released her seventh studio album, Man's Best Friend, a year after her previous hit Short and Sweet. The promo artwork was released in June and wasn't well received, but what have critics made of her new music? Joining us now is The Standard's culture writer, India Block. India, can you tell us a bit more about Sabrina's rise to fame? Sabrina has actually been plugging away at her career for ages. She was a Disney Channel girl. She released multiple albums when she was with the Disney and Hollywood Records.

9:43None of them really gained traction until she joined Island Records in 2021. By then, she'd already had four albums out her fifth was called emails I can't send and I think that had more of a sort of cult fan following she didn't really get onto the radar of sort of general music listeners until short and sweet which was last year's album she's had a massive tour off the back of that so re top 100 singles espresso please please please and taste so I think for some people She seemingly came out of nowhere, but actually she's been working on her craft for a really, really long time. When she revealed the cover art for this album, it almost broke the internet.

10:29What was that controversy about? Personally, I think it was a bit ridiculous, but I think it sort of gets to this tension within the Sabrina Carpenter fandom. So the image itself, if you haven't seen it, involves her in a little black dress on her knees with a sort of anonymous male figure looping his hand through her hair and kind of raising it up almost like a dog leash. It was a really sort of vintage feminist 3.0 backlash argument about how it was, but the male gaze and it was overly sexualized and what sort of message was she sending that she was being dog warped by a man. Personally, I think it's quite ridiculous.

11:10A lot of her work is very sort of adult in themes, very sexy, but nothing is really for the male gaze. She's definitely performing for an audience of young women and gay men. She's a pop diva. She's not trying to attract this audience of preteens. there is this slight, I don't know if I'd call it a problem, but I mean, I've been to a lot of Sabrina Carpenter gigs myself. And I did notice the one at the O2 in London, there were a lot of really young girls there. I mean, like under 10s with their parents, wearing Sabrina Carpenter merchandise, some of which is quite sexualized. And it's quite a bawdy show, the short and sweet one.

11:56She kind of always strikes a different sex position for Juno. She does her bad cam dance routine that's kind of like a sexy girls hotline number. I think maybe it's because of her Disney Channel roots that perhaps she attracts a younger audience, but that isn't, I think, intentional. But it then became this lightning rod of discussion over whether her work is too sexual, what she's kind of saying through that. I think people are too puritanical. She's really funny. She does a lot of these sort of slapstick retro routines that are sexy, but not in a like Britney Spears writhing around with a snake way.

12:40She's very much in charge of her own sexuality and her own image. And a lot of her music is mainly about how dating men can be really, really awful, and they can be really, really annoying. And Sabrina previously said in an interview that this album is not for the pearl clutches having listened to it would you agree yeah 100 i think she has taken all of that criticism on board and doubled down it's really funny i just think she's hilarious at the same time as releasing the album she also released the music video for her song tears it's number two in the album track list and the music video she's vamping around with Coleman Domingo, they're doing this sort of Rocky Horror picture show pastiche where she's playing Janet, her little suit is ripped off and she's in her bussy lingerie pole dancing in a cornfield and the lyrics, I get wet at the thought of you being a responsible guy, treating me like you're supposed to, I get tears running down my thighs.

13:40So it's, yeah, I mean, it's raunchy, but I would say self-empowered it's about having a competence kink for someone who actually behaves well there's also house tour another great song where she's kind of supposedly inviting someone to come and look around her house and she says i want you to come inside but never enter through the back door she's a very witty lyricist and that is part of her whole her whole shtick did anything surprise you about this album her last track goodbye is really abba inflected there's lots of sort of like ahas sorry for singing on the podcast there but she's really playing tribute to a lot of different genres.

14:31We know that she does this kind of old Hollywood. We know that she does a lot of sort of country in the style of Dolly Parton. And there's a few tracks on there where she leans into that. We kind of knew she was going to do a little bit more disco. And that really shines through. So I think I wasn't expecting it to be such a showcase of all her different styles. I would say she worked with Jack Antonoff for this record. And you can kind of tell just because he's working with everyone at the moment you know Charlie, Lord, Taylor so there is a little bit of sameness but that could also be because we literally just had an album from her last year I think some people will think that it was rushed because of this back-to-back nature of the albums but I think she is sort of a consummate workhorse and for her when she was out there kind of performing this album she decided she wanted to make new material how distinctive is she as a modern pop star in such a crowded marketplace is she doing anything musically interesting yes i think she is because she really does have mastery of these different styles and it still sounds a lot like sabrina and i think that is because she is such a funny lyricist i think if you sort of were just playing the tunes you would be a bit like okay here we go again another disco another sort of Dolly Parton country song but because she is sort of funny and in charge of her image I think that is enough to differentiate herself she's had time to work on it and discover her voice and her niche and her like groove so I think that is enough but I'm not sure that we're gonna have a sort of late entry song of the summer from this album like espresso was in 2024

16:31and that's the standard for all the latest news head to standard.co.uk if you'd like to get in touch please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk we'll be back here on monday at 5pm. We'll see you then.