Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to prioritise prison staff for receipt of a COVID-19 vaccination.

For phase two of the COVID-19 vaccination programme, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s (JCVI) interim advice sets out that the most effective way to minimise hospitalisations and deaths is to continue to prioritise people by age, as it is assessed to be the strongest factor linked to mortality, morbidity and hospitalisation.

Prison staff will not therefore be prioritised in phase two of the COVID-19 vaccine programme. However, in order to minimise vaccine wastage in delivery of the programme, the JCVI has advised that where vaccines remain unused following an offer of vaccination to those in detained settings, such vaccine it could reasonably be offered to prison officers.