If Boris Johnson is a betting man then he is putting it all on boosters. As the Omicron variant spreads throughout the UK, and early data shows three doses of the jabs are needed for protection, Johnson has announced a speed-up of the booster programme. All over-18s are eligible from Monday, with the aim of rolling out 1m booster jabs a day through GPs and even the army.
It’s a bold and necessary move but it would be naive to suggest it will be straightforward. Consider that the most jabs administered since the booster rollout began in September is a record of 699,192 on one day. The NHS website to book booster jabs had “technical difficulties” shortly after Johnson’s televised address, on top of previous IT glitches. There have already been accounts of people struggling to access their booster over the past month due to vaccine shortages, as well marginalised patients – such as those in rural communities – not being able to get to large centralised vaccine centres miles from their homes.
Most worryingly, large numbers of clinically vulnerable people are missing out on their booster. Take those whose health or age means they are unable to leave the house to go to a vaccine centre. Nearly two-thirds of housebound people are yet to receive their booster after many already stretched GPs opted out of delivering top-up jabs. That translates as about 300,000 of the most clinically vulnerable people in the country having not yet received their extra protection.
In March, I reported how some people who were housebound were missing out on the first and second vaccines, and in an all too predictable tragedy it is happening again. I spoke to the family of an 81-year-old woman this week who missed out on her Covid jabs last year because she was unable to leave her home and her GP “didn’t have her down as housebound on the system”. After developing bedsores, she was admitted to hospital and caught Covid while there. Unvaccinated, she died soon after. “Covid safety measures meant we had to have a funeral with no wake and the whole thing was just horrific,” her granddaughter told me. “My step-grandad sat there and cried and said, ‘I just want to kiss her goodbye.’”
Elsewhere, immunocompromised patients report they are now missing out on additional doses of vaccines after confusion over who is eligible for a third dose followed by a booster jab. Some patients say their third dose has been wrongly recorded on their medical records as a booster jab, resulting in them being turned away. One woman with lupus, who has to take multiple medications to suppress her immune system, told me she’s due her booster this week – but her GP can’t give it to her because the system didn’t record her third dose correctly. “My GP is amazing – if she could find a way to give it to me she would – but the system just won’t allow it.”
Or consider infants, who have not even had their first vaccine dose. And leading scientists this week called for the vaccination of young children in a bid to tackle the new variant and keep schools open, with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said to be currently reviewing data on Covid jabs for children over five as a “matter of urgency”. Remarkably, however, there has been no word on the need to specifically protect children with disabilities. Unlike other nations, such as the US, where vaccines have already been rolled out to children as young as five with no underlying health condition, in the UK a vaccine has still not been approved for under-12s – even if a child is extremely vulnerable.
I spoke to the mum of an 11-year-old girl this week who has complex physical and learning disabilities. Her daughter can’t socially distance – she needs daily care and besides, she doesn’t understand how – but because she’s 11 and not 12, she’s just missed off the vaccine eligibility list. “Covid is circulating at her and her brother’s schools and it’s terrifying. The fact that pupils are exempt from self-isolating if they have a positive contact is particularly worrying. Your vulnerable child could be spending all day in class with someone whose parent has Covid, and because of their age they aren’t even vaccinated.” The charity Contact tells me it is in touch with several families hoping to start legal action about the continued lack of access to the vaccine for their clinically extremely vulnerable children. “They feel completely ignored and back of the queue again after all the talk of the booster drive.”
In light of alleged Downing Street parties, there is rightly concern about how dwindling public trust will affect the booster drive – but perhaps not enough attention on whether the drive itself is fit for purpose. It has long been a paradox of the vaccine rollout that those who are most in need of protection from coronavirus are often the ones who find it hardest to access. Running an emergency mass Christmas booster programme may be the greatest challenge of the pandemic so far, but clinically vulnerable adults and children can’t be allowed to fall through the cracks. Lives depend on Johnson’s bet paying off.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist and author of Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People
