Coronavirus: Vaccination
(asked on 4th November 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of excluding (a) general practitioners and (b) other frontline medical staff from the covid-19 booster vaccination programme in autumn 2025 on (i) patient safety and (ii) workforce resilience; if he will take steps to amend the eligibility criteria.
The Government is committed to protecting those most vulnerable to COVID-19 through vaccination, as guided by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). The JCVI has advised that COVID-19 is now a relatively mild disease for most people, though it can still be unpleasant, with rates of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19 having reduced significantly since it first emerged. The primary aim of the national COVID-19 vaccination programme remains the prevention of serious illness, resulting in hospitalisations and deaths, arising from COVID-19. On 13 November 2024, the JCVI published advice on the COVID-19 vaccination programme for spring 2025, autumn 2025, and spring 2026. This advice is available at the following link:
On 26 June 2025, the Government accepted the JCVI’s advice for autumn 2025, and in line with this, in autumn 2025 a COVID-19 vaccination is being offered to adults aged 75 years old and over, residents in care homes for older adults, and the immunosuppressed aged six months old and over.
In line with JCVI advice, frontline health and social care workers (HSCWs) and staff working in care homes for older adults are not eligible for COVID-19 vaccination under the national programme for autumn 2025. This is following an extensive review by JCVI of the scientific evidence surrounding the impact of vaccination on the transmission of the virus from HSCWs to patients, protection of HSCWs against symptoms of the disease, and staff sickness absences.
In the current era of high population immunity to COVID-19, additional COVID-19 doses provide very limited, if any, protection against infection and any subsequent onward transmission of infection. For HSCWs, this means that COVID-19 vaccination likely now has only a very limited impact on patient safety and reducing staff sickness absence. Therefore, the focus of the programme is on those at greatest risk of serious disease and who are, as a consequence, most likely to continue to benefit from vaccination.
Any HSCW who is otherwise eligible, because of their age or due to immunosuppression, is encouraged to take up the offer of vaccination.
The Government has accepted JCVI’s advice on eligibility for the autumn 2025 COVID-19 vaccination programme and has no plans to review eligibility for this campaign. As for all vaccines, the JCVI keeps the evidence under regular review.