Current status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 17 September 2024
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the success of the previous winter vaccination programme.
As part of the 2023-24 COVID-19 and flu winter vaccination programme NHS Scotland delivered over 3.57 million winter vaccines, including 1,387,766 COVID-19 vaccines, 1,647,596 adult flu vaccines and 538,580 child flu vaccines. Uptake dropped across almost all groups, but remained strong in the highest risk groups, with over 85% of care home residents and almost 85% of those aged over 75 vaccinated for both vaccines, the groups mostly likely to be admitted to hospital with these illnesses. We continued to surpass the World Health Organisation’s flu target of 75% uptake for those aged 65 and over, achieving 79.8%.
The primary aim of the vaccination programme remains the prevention of severe illness and the vaccine offer is to those most likely to directly benefit from vaccination, particularly those with underlying health conditions that increase their risk of hospitalisation. The data from last winter’s programme shows that uptake remained strong within these eligible groups and meets the primary aim of the winter programme.
There were however certain groups where uptake was far lower than expected, for both COVID-19 and flu, notably pregnant women, frontline health and social care workers and those at clinical risk, although uptake in those with a weakened immune system was better than for more general at risk conditions.
The emergence of the new, and theoretically more dangerous variant BA.2.86 in late summer 2023 resulted in us deciding to pull forward the programme to protect those at higher risk. We appointed those at higher risk into all and any spare appointments at the start and middle of the programme, meaning that those at lower risk, who had been prompted to book, found it hard to find spare appointments until November and December. It is difficult to quantify, but we believe that some individuals may have not come forward due to this difficulty.
The Scottish Vaccination and Immunisation Programme (SVIP) has already undertaken various pieces of work to understand why overall uptake has decreased and we have incorporated that learning into our planning for this winter campaign. Communicating why annual revaccination (or bi-annual in the case of COVID for higher risk groups) remains necessary and important is key, as is reiterating the value of these vaccines, and the real health risk to some people in contracting these viruses over the winter period.
We will continue to work closely with Public Health Scotland and the NHS Boards to ensure the successful delivery of Scotland’s vaccination programmes.