Flu and COVID-19 Seasonal Vaccination Programme: autumn/winter 2024/25
Thank you for your continued commitment to the flu and COVID-19 vaccination programmes and for the planning you have undertaken to date in readiness to deliver autumn/winter vaccinations.
Vaccination is a high priority action for the NHS, to protect people from serious illness and to support NHS and adult social care resilience.
Ensuring that eligible people receive high quality information about vaccination from people they trust, and providing a convenient offer in which people have confidence, are critical actions to maximise protection.
The government has accepted final advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) regarding a COVID-19 autumn/winter 2024/25 vaccination programme.
The groups to be offered a COVID-19 vaccine in autumn/winter 2024/25 are:
- residents in a care home for older adults
- all adults aged 65 years and over
- persons aged 6 months to 64 years in a clinical risk group, as defined in tables 3 and 4 of the COVID-19 chapter of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) Green Book on immunisation against infectious disease
The JCVI also advises that health and social care service providers may wish to consider whether vaccination provided as an occupational health programme to frontline health and social care workers is appropriate in future years; and that ahead of such considerations, health departments may choose to continue to extend an offer of vaccination to frontline health and social care workers and staff working in care homes for older adults in autumn 2024.
The government has decided that frontline health and social care workers and staff working in care homes for older adults will continue to be offered COVID-19 vaccination in the autumn 2024 programme in England.
The cohorts eligible for the flu programme are the same as those set out in the National Flu Immunisation Programme 2024 to 2025 letter.
