Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they expect general practitioners to use their clinical judgement in including patients with existing diseases in Group 6 for COVID-19 vaccinations if they consider them to be at risk of exacerbation of their underlying disease should they become infected with COVID-19.

Clinicians, including general practitioners (GPs) are able to use their clinical judgement to categorise patients as clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) because they consider them to be at very high risk of serious illness from COVID-19. Those categorised as CEV are in priority group four of phase one of the vaccination programme. Those who are not categorised as CEV but have underlying conditions that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advises have increased clinical risk from COVID-19 are in priority group six. Within the broad set of clinical conditions within priority group six, GPs and other clinicians are able to add individuals to this group. They are able to use clinical judgement to take into account the risk of COVID-19 exacerbating any underlying disease that a patient may have, as well as the risk of serious illness from the virus itself.