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 prioritising kinship carers in the covid-19 vaccination programme.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Imuunisation (JCVI) have advised that the vaccine be given to care home residents and staff, as well as frontline health and social care workers, to those aged 50 and above, in order of age and clinical risk factors, and those with underlying health conditions, which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality.

Unpaid carers, including kinship carers, who are the sole or primary carer of an elderly or disabled person who is at increased risk of COVID-19 mortality and therefore clinically vulnerable, are included in the JCVI’s priority group 6 for phase 1 of the rollout.