Coronavirus: Screening and Vaccination
(asked on 8th February 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including shop workers providing essential services in the priority group for covid-19 vaccination and testing.
Shop workers providing essential services will be offered their vaccinations alongside other adults of the same age, or earlier if they have underlying health conditions that make them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. They are not currently being prioritised because of their occupation alone, as age is assessed to be the strongest factor linked to mortality, morbidity and hospitalisations, and because the speed of delivery is crucial as we provide more people with protection from COVID-19.
For the first phase, the Government decided, based on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advice, that the vaccine first be given to 9 identified priority groups. The two highest priority groups were care home residents and staff followed by frontline health and social care workers and everyone aged over 80. Frontline health and social care workers are prioritised in the first phase because they are at high risk of acquiring COVID-19 infection but also of transmitting that infection to multiple persons who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 as well as to other staff in a healthcare environment. The remaining 7 priority groups in the first phase include all those identified at either higher clinical risk or clinically extremely vulnerable, unpaid carers, and anyone not included in those groups but aged 50 or above. Everyone aged over 50 is included even where the individual has no other risk factors because serious outcomes from COVID-19 are strongly age related.
For Phase 2 of the COVID 19 vaccination programme, the JCVI published its interim advice on 26 February setting out that the most effective way to minimise hospitalisations and deaths is to continue to prioritise people by age, rather than by occupation. This advice can be found at the following link: