Influenza: Vaccination

(asked on 22nd January 2019) - View Source

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 merits of monitoring influenza vaccination uptake among social care staff.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 28th January 2019

Frontline social care workers should be provided with influenza vaccine by their employer, with some staff able to access vaccination from their general practitioner or community pharmacy in a scheme funded by NHS England. Collecting comprehensive uptake data at a national level would be challenging. Most social care organisations do not have appropriate systems in place either to deliver influenza vaccine or collect uptake information and there are a large number of organisations, many independent, in the sector.

In 2016/17, Public Health England undertook a pilot data collection in a sample of 320 care homes across England with a response rate of 51%. 70% of responding care homes do not have systems in place to collect data on staff influenza vaccination. In addition, only 38% of the responding care homes in the study sample provided data on vaccine uptake despite considerable local follow-up.

For the 2018/19 season, NHS England is collecting data on the number of social care workers that access vaccination through the scheme they fund for some staff.

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