Spring Covid booster jab for care home residents

Care home residents, people aged over 75 and those who are immunosuppressed can now book a spring Covid booster jab.

It comes as research shows autumn booster protection starts to wane between three and seven months.

Health and social care secretary Sajid Javid says: "Our phenomenal vaccination programme has saved countless lives and built a wall of defence which has allowed us to learn to live with Covid. Following the massive success of the rollout so far, we are now offering over-75s and the most vulnerable a spring booster dose to top up their protection against this virus. Please come forward as soon as you are contacted by the NHS."

Findings from a Vivaldi study, funded by the UK Health Security Agency, found two vaccine doses were effective at preventing 85% of hospitalisations and 94% of deaths among care home residents between two and 12 weeks after the second dose.

However, protection fell to 54% of hospitalisations and 63% of deaths at three to seven months after vaccination. Once residents were given their booster, in the autumn, protection against hospitalisation was back up to 90% and against deaths to 98%.

More than 15,000 care home residents were surveyed in 331 care homes across England from December 2020 to December 2021. For the 19,000 care home staff, who had an average age of 45, who were also tracked in the study, protection against infection fell marginally from 50% to 42% reduced risk after three months.

Professor Laura Shallcross, a public health expert at University College London who authored the paper, says: “Our data suggests that repeated booster jabs may be needed to protect elderly care home residents in future, as immunity wanes relatively quickly in this group following vaccination.

“We observe an increased risk of infection, hospital admission and death in residents as early as 12 weeks following vaccination. This underscores the critical need for continued surveillance in care homes to provide an early warning of surges in infection linked to new variants or waning immunity. Our data stops before Omicron became dominant, but it is likely this pattern of diminishing immunity after vaccination will continue with this milder variant.”

Local NHS teams will contact care homes to arrange the jab for people who are eligible and have been invited. It comes after the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended the spring top-up.

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