Leaving our quarantine bubbles to queue patiently for the first round of Covid-19 jabs feels like a lifetime ago. Who’d have thought in March 2020 that within two years so many of us would have sat through the vaccination process not once, not twice but three times?
However, that era will soon be over as healthy people under 50 have just over two weeks before they will no longer be eligible for booster jabs.
The current booster rollout for healthy adults aged 16 to 49 is due to end on February 12 following advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). People within that group who have already had their first and second jabs are eligible for a third up until that date. The decision to end the offer is partly based on the decrease in uptake from young and healthy members of the public since it began in December 2021.
Vaccine experts have advised that campaigns should become more targeted, meaning only certain groups will be eligible for first, second and booster jabs at certain times of the year.
Spring and autumn campaigns will be launched later in the year for the country’s most vulnerable groups. The new targeted programme for primary and booster jabs will be for people including care-home residents and workers, frontline health and social care workers, over-50s, those clinically at risk and those who live with someone who is immunosuppressed.
Professor Wei Shen Lim, the JCVI chair of Covid-9 vaccination, said: ‘The Covid-19 vaccination programme continues to reduce severe disease across the population, while helping to protect the NHS.
‘That is why we have advised planning for further booster vaccines for persons at higher risk of serious illness through an autumn booster programme later this year.
‘We will very shortly also provide final advice on a spring booster programme for those at greatest risk.’
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