Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of including unpaid carers in the same priority group as frontline health and social care workers for the covid-19 vaccine.

Social care workers include those working in long-stay residential and nursing care homes or other long-stay care facilities where rapid spread is likely to follow introduction of infection and cause high morbidity and mortality. This also includes social care staff directly involved in the care of their patients or clients, and others involved directly in delivering social care such that they and vulnerable patients and clients are at increased risk of exposure.