Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of allowing unpaid family carers to receive Covid-19 booster vaccinations alongside the person they care for where a home vaccination visit is already taking place.

The Government is committed to protecting those most vulnerable to COVID-19 through vaccination, as guided by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). The primary aim of the national COVID-19 vaccination programme remains the prevention of serious illness, resulting in hospitalisations and deaths, arising from COVID-19.

The JCVI advised in its autumn 2024 advice that, in the current era of high population immunity to COVID-19 and with all cases due to Omicron sub-lineages of COVID-19, currently available COVID-19 vaccines provide limited protection against transmission and mild or asymptomatic disease. The JCVI therefore advised that the focus of the programme should be on offering vaccination where it directly protects an individual at higher risk. In line with this advice, unpaid carers as well as household contacts of the immunosuppressed ceased to be offered COVID-19 vaccination from autumn 2024.

In line with the advice the JCVI gave for 2025 and spring 2026, a COVID-19 vaccination will be offered this spring to the following groups:

• adults aged 75 years old and over;
• residents in care homes for older adults; and
• individuals aged six months old and over who are immunosuppressed.

The JCVI keeps all vaccination programmes under review.