Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to introduce specific plans after the covid-19 outbreak to encourage eligible patients through proactive measures, such as call and recall, to attend primary care to get the shingles vaccine.

People in the age group eligible for the shingles vaccine are required to take particular care to avoid situations where they are at higher risk of acquiring COVID-19 and are therefore not currently being actively called for immunisation by their general practitioner (GP). However, if they are attending the GP practice for other reasons and it is clinically appropriate to offer shingles vaccine, they will be given the vaccine.

Maintaining routine vaccination services during COVID-19 and recovering delivery of our national immunisation programme are high priorities for the Government and the health and care sector but need to be considered in light of social distancing and shielding measures. An immunisation recovery plan is being drawn up by NHS England and NHS Improvement, taking into account risk assessment advice from Public Health England, which will include proactive use of call/recall.