COVID-19 vaccination programme: a central role for primary care
Anthony Harnden, Wei Shen Lim, Andrew Earnshaw
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic seems relentless. People are frightened and demoralised with their loss of freedoms, jobs, education, and leisure. Health inequalities are being exacerbated. Most know someone who has been hospitalised or died. Primary care teams and staff have risen to the challenges but are fatigued. The second wave has been especially hard hitting with the new B.1.1.7 variant of the virus being much more transmissible and cases rapidly rising.1 COVID-19 vaccines offer a route back to normality, but who should be prioritised and what is the role of primary care? The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has set out key priority groups for the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccination programme.2 These priority groups are primarily age based, as the risk of mortality from COVID-19 increases rapidly with age. The first four priority groups identified for vaccination include all the over 70-year-olds and clinically extremely vulnerable, and should target 88% of potentially preventable deaths from COVID-19. The first nine priority groups should target 99% of preventable deaths. Frontline health and social care workers are essential to keep the health and social care systems functioning at a time of enormous pressure. This together with a large exposure risk and potential to transmit infection to clinically vulnerable patients led JCVI to recommend that they are prioritised in the early phase of the vaccination programme. It is important that a large proportion of these professionals are immunised as quickly as possible — and that includes all those working in patient facing roles in primary care. Vaccinators should be offered early vaccination. Evidence is currently limited on protection against …