Coronavirus: Vaccination

(asked on 19th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government which health conditions or treatments they categorised as resulting in a patient being immunocompromised when making their estimate of the total number of immunocompromised people who will not be able to benefit from a COVID-19 vaccine.


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 13th January 2021

The Department has worked closely at Ministerial and official level with our partners in the devolved administrations since the beginning of the outbreak, discussing a broad range of issues, in order to formulate an effective response.

Both primary immunodeficiency, the result of an inherited genetic defect, and secondary immunodeficiency, the result of disease or treatment and which may be temporary, have a variety of causes. Incidence, diagnosis or overall collective prevalence data that capture all possible types of immune deficiency, are not routinely collected or recorded centrally.

The Green Book lists the immunocompromised as part of the clinical risk groups over the age of 18 years old who should receive COVID-19 immunisation, as recommended by the latest advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), but notes that some immunocompromised patients may have a suboptimal immunological response to the vaccine. The JCVI has considered vaccination of household contacts of immunosuppressed individuals. However, at this time there is no data on the size of the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on transmission. Once enough evidence becomes available, the JCVI will consider options for a cocooning strategy for immunosuppressed individuals, including whether any specific vaccine is preferred for this population.

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