Asked by: Baroness Wheatcroft (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the provision of vaccines against COVID-19 for (1) elderly, or (2) vulnerable, patients hospitalised for other conditions.
Answered by Lord Bethell
By mid-February we successfully offered a first vaccine dose to everyone in the top four priority groups identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation as follows:
- all residents in a care home for older adults and their carers;
- all those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers;
- all those 75 years of age and over; and
- all those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals.
The latest NHS England data dated 4 March shows that 7,300,964 individuals aged 70 years old or over have been vaccinated with at least one dose and 1,961,501 clinically extremely vulnerable patients have been vaccinated with at least one dose. This means 88.3% of the population identified as clinically extremely vulnerable have received at least one dose. We do not hold figures for vulnerable patients hospitalised for other conditions, but hospital hubs will typically vaccinate eligible inpatients where clinically appropriate.