The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has announced its advice to the UK government on eligible groups for the 2024 COVID-19 vaccination programme in autumn.
Similar to previous spring and autumn COVID-19 vaccination advice announced in March and August 2023, respectively, the Committee has advised offering the vaccine to those at high risk of serious disease and who are therefore more likely to benefit from the vaccination.
The vaccines continue to help protect against severe illness, hospitalisations and death arising from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This autumn, the JCVI has advised that adults aged 65 years and over, residents in a care home for older adults and individuals aged six months to 64 years in a clinical risk group will be offered the COVID-19 vaccine.
Eligible individuals will be offered the vaccine no earlier than around six months after the last vaccine dose, with NHS England due to confirm the operational details for the programme in due course and encourage those eligible to take up the offer ahead of winter.
The UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) director, public health programmes, Dr Mary Ramsay, explained that ongoing surveillance has shown that “COVID-19 continues to cause severe illness, putting many in hospitals, particularly older people and those with underlying medical conditions”.
“The autumn vaccines are effective in helping to give added protection to those most at risk – almost halving the likelihood of hospitalisation from the virus for a few months following vaccination and over the winter period,” she said.
Professor Wei Shen Lim, chair, JCVI’s COVID-19 immunisation group, said: “The COVID-19 autumn programme will continue to focus on those at greatest risk of getting seriously ill.”
Last year, the UKHSA’s surveillance data showed that those who received a vaccine last autumn were around 45% less likely to be admitted to hospital with COVID-19 from two weeks following vaccination, with protection lasting around four months, as well as 70% vaccine uptake for those aged 65 years and over.
Most recently, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved Pfizer/BioNTech’s Omicron JN.1-adapted COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty JN.1, which is designed to target the widely circulating variant, for use in adults and children from infancy.