Doctors call for better targeting of Covid vaccinations in UK

The failure to take a more sophisticated approach to the Covid vaccination programme is leaving some of the most deprived and at-risk individuals, including ethnic minorities, unprotected, the head of the British Medical Association has warned.

The UK government is aiming to offer everyone in the top four priority groups as set out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) – everyone over the age of 70, care home residents, health and social care workers and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals – a first dose by 15 February.

But Chaand Nagpaul, the BMA council chair, said no account had been taken of accompanying JCVI advice that states the programme should pay “due attention to mitigating health inequalities, such as might occur in relation to access to healthcare and ethnicity”.

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The government’s joint committee on vaccination and immunisation has published a list of groups of people who will be prioritised to receive a vaccine for Covid-19 in the UK. The list is:

1 All those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers.

2 All those 75 and over.

3 All those 70 and over.

4 All those 65 and over.

5 Adults under 65 at high at risk of serious disease and mortality from Covid-19.

6 Adults under 65 at moderate risk of at risk of serious disease and mortality from Covid-19.

7 All those 60 and over.

8 All those 55 and over.

9 All those 50 and over.

10 Rest of the population.

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He said: “We need to be much more sophisticated in making sure the vaccine rollout reaches the people who are at highest risk, beyond the simplistic tiers [priority groups].

“One thing we know is Covid-19 has exacerbated health inequalities. So one of the aims of the vaccination programme should be that in addition to the over-80s and the over-70s etc, there should be a parallel approach of the programme rollout to target health inequalities, especially in deprived communities, and as they apply to ethnic minorities.”

Office for National Statistics data from the first wave showed people living in the poorest areas of England and Wales were twice as likely to die from Covid-19 as those in less deprived areas. According to Public Health England (PHE), people from ethnic minorities were up to twice as likely as white Britons to die from Covid.

Many minority ethnic groups are more likely to live in deprived areas, in overcrowded housing, and to be in lower-paid, unstable work, often with a high degree of public contact.

Preliminary findings by researchers at the University of Oxford’s DataLab and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found black people and those in more deprived areas were less likely to receive the vaccine than others during the first weeks of distribution.