Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has plans to make an assessment of the potential merits of including those on the influenza Green Book within the covid-19 booster programme.

The potential merits of using the influenza clinical risk groups as a potential way to identify and prioritise individuals for COVID-19 vaccination was assessed during the development of phase one recommendations for the primary COVID-19 vaccination programme. However, when evaluating the data, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation found that there were differences between those at high risk of severe flu and those at high risk of severe COVID-19 infection.

The COVID-19 booster vaccine programme follows the priority groups one to nine in phase one of the programme to be offered a third dose of vaccine six months after their primary course.