Influenza: Vaccination
(asked on 31st March 2025) - 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 trends in the level of uptake of the flu vaccine in Winter 2024-25.
For England, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) publishes monthly provisional data for general practice (GP) patients, school-aged children and frontline healthcare workers (HCWs), with weekly data for GP patients also available from October to January. The data is available at the following link:
Final end of season data is published in the annual reports in late spring. Monthly and annual data is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/vaccine-uptake#seasonal-flu-vaccine-uptake:-figures
Flu vaccine uptake in 2024 to 2025 (based on the latest provisional monthly data) and the same timepoint in the previous season, is shown in the table below:
Cohort | 65 years and over | Clinical risk | Pregnant | 2-year- olds | 3-year- olds | Primary school-aged | Secondary school age | HCWs |
2024/25 | 74.9% | 40.0% | 35.0% | 41.7% | 43.5% | 54.6% | 46.4% | 37.9% |
2023/24 | 77.8% | 41.4% | 32.1% | 44.1% | 44.6% | 55.2% | 43.0% | 42.8% |
Caution should be used in comparing uptake between seasons. The advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is that it is preferable to vaccinate adults closer to when the flu virus is likely to circulate. Accordingly, vaccination for adults in clinical risk groups, those aged 65 years old and over, and frontline HCWs started from 3 October 2024, rather than 1 September as in previous seasons.