Influenza: Vaccination

(asked on 8th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to (a) provide and (b) monitor the uptake of the free flu vaccine for social care staff during winter 2020-21; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 17th June 2020

Responsibility for offering flu vaccination to social care workers rests with their employers as part of their occupational health responsibility to help protect both staff and those that they care for. To improve access, NHS England and NHS Improvement have provided a complementary scheme so that social care workers and hospice workers can also obtain the flu vaccination through their general practitioner or local pharmacy. This scheme will continue in 2020/21.

NHS England and NHS Improvement monitor the number of social care workers vaccinated through community pharmacies. However, national data collection on those immunised via occupational health is challenging, because there are a large number of providers, including many independent providers, with no national baseline data of the total workforce. We are in discussions with the Care Quality Commission, NHS England and NHS Improvement and Public Health England on how we can improve data collection for 2020/21, so that we can monitor vaccine uptake in the social care sector.

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