Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 22 February 2023 to Question 146946 on Mortality Rates, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of the level of update of the flu vaccine by (a) children and (b) adolescents on the level of excess deaths in winter 2022-23.
There is no assessment of this for the 2022 to 2023 season. Vaccination of children against influenza was recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation in 2012 as modelling suggested it was likely to be highly cost-effective even at relatively low levels of uptake. In 2022 to 2023 children in clinical risk groups, aged two and three years old, in primary school, and in secondary school years seven to nine were eligible.