Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance his Department has issued to GP surgeries on ensuring that housebound (a) elderly and (b) vulnerable people are able to receive a covid-19 vaccine in the same time frame as other people in the same priority groups for the covid-19 vaccine who are not housebound.

Guidance has been issued to support local vaccination services to deliver the vaccine to housebound patients in the priority groups, as outlined by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisations (JCVI). Appendix E of the document: ‘COVID-19 local vaccination services deployment in community settings’, issued on 4 January 2021, provides guidance to Primary Care Network (PCN)-run local vaccination services sites on vaccinating housebound patients. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/publication/standard-operating-procedure-covid-19-local-vaccination-services-deployment-in-community-settings/

PCNs should use the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to vaccinate housebound patients. General practice teams, alongside community teams, are to determine the approach to reaching housebound patients based on their knowledge of the patient and circumstances. This includes patients who are completely housebound and unable to travel to a PCN site.