Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 28 October 2024 to Question 10592, whether he has received any further advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation on the potential merits of extending eligibility for the Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccination to people who turned 80 before 1 September 2024.

The Department has not received any further advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccination programme for older adults since the Committee’s advice of 3 June 2023.

The latest discussion of RSV by the JCVI was during their October 2024 main committee meeting. The Committee agreed that it would need to formally review, in detail, the evidence for a potential extension to the programme for the very elderly and for those in risk groups which would be undertaken by the RSV sub-committee.

The JCVI will review the necessary scientific evidence once it is available and will continue to keep evidence under review, including data from clinical trials and real-world evidence emerging from immunisation programmes in different countries. The next JCVI committee meeting is scheduled to take place in February 2025. The minutes from this meeting will be made publicly available in spring 2025 at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/joint-committee-on-vaccination-and-immunisation

The Department will consider any further JCVI advice on who should be offered an RSV immunisation in due course.