Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the cost effectiveness of the covid-19 vaccine booster programme, in the context of the findings on the impact of vaccination take-up in care homes on resident mortality in the report by Sourafel Girma and David Paton entitled Using double-debiased machine learning to estimate the impact of Covid-19 vaccination on mortality and staff absences in elderly care homes, published in European Economic Review, Volume 170, November 2024.

The Government is committed to protecting those most vulnerable to COVID-19 through vaccination, as guided by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). The JCVI considers the cost effectiveness of immunisation strategies, alongside a range of data, including epidemiological and vaccine effectiveness data, when formulating its advice. On 13 November 2024, the JCVI published advice on the COVID-19 vaccination programme in 2025 and spring 2026. This advice is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-in-2025-and-spring-2026

The Government is considering this advice carefully and will respond in due course.