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 giving priority vaccines to adults who are cared for at home and their carers alongside adults resident in a care home and care workers.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) are the independent experts who advise the Government on which vaccines the United Kingdom should use and provide advice on prioritisation at a population level.  For the first phase, the JCVI have advised that the vaccine be given to care home residents and staff, as well as frontline health and social care workers, then to the rest of the population in order of age and clinical risk factors.

If a person is cared for at home and falls under the criteria for prioritisation in phase one of the COVID-19 vaccination programme, they will be vaccinated according to their priority group; this includes those considered clinically extremely vulnerable and those considered to be ‘adults at risk’.

Those who are in receipt of a carer’s allowance or those who are the main carer of an elderly or disabled person whose welfare may be at risk if the carer falls ill should also be offered vaccination in priority group six.