Boris Johnson claims England has reached a “crucial milestone” with tens of thousands of coronavirus vaccinations offered to care home residents and staff.
But while the vaccination programme appears to be broadly going very well, with nearly nine million people offered first doses, the prime minister’s words on care homes did not quite reveal the full story.
In January, Johnson set an ambitious target to offer jabs to all care home residents and staff by the end of the month. The government says this has been met, but it does not mean all of them have actually been vaccinated.
Here’s why.
What was the target?
In its vaccine delivery plan published on January 11, the government said: “It is our ambition to offer the vaccine to all care home residents and staff in the more than 10,000 care homes in England for older people by the end of January.”
Days earlier, on January 7, Boris Johnson also said in a Downing Street press conference: “By the end of the month we hope to have offered every elderly care home resident a vaccine.”
Have they achieved it?
It depends what “offered” means.
The government admits that not every elderly care home resident or staff member who wants a vaccine has been able to get one, but is insisting it has still met its target.
That means either that it considers the offer of a vaccine at a date after January 31 to be consistent with the original pledge – which some may feel differently about – or that people were unable to take up those offers, perhaps because they or people around them contracted coronavirus.
A government spokesperson on Monday insisted that in fact all residents and staff had been “offered” the jab.
Care minister Helen Whately, however, seemed less certain.
Asked whether all staff had been offered the jab, she replied: “We are still working through the care home staff. It will take a little more time, I think, to get through all the care home staff.
“We are determined by February 15 to have offered the vaccine to all the social care workforce.”
A spokesperson said a “small remainder” of residents had their vaccine visits deferred for safety reasons during local outbreaks, but that these people would be visited “as soon as NHS staff are allowed to do so”.
Moreover, whether or not they have been “offered” a jab, there still appear to be thousands of care home staff who have not been physically vaccinated.
Vic Rayner, the executive director of the National Care Forum (NCF), which represents not-for-profit providers, said just 27% of its member organisations had 70% or more of their staff vaccinated as of early last week, adding that access to doses was the main issue.
She told Sky News: “The priority over the next two weeks is to get the vaccine out to 1.6m people who work across care. So it is a big, big task and a big clock is ticking away around that.”
Whately was also questioned on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme vaccination programme about claims some care homes had not in fact been contacted.
She said: “Any care home that hasn’t been contacted, just let me know and I will personally follow up. I can be contacted on my ministerial email address.”
So why hasn’t the government vaccinated all care home staff and residents?
Local public health directors deferred some vaccine visits to care homes for safety reasons due to coronavirus outbreaks in what NHS England called a “small number of cases”.
But the picture is more complex among staff, with some people refusing vaccination, and GPs visiting homes also running out of jabs after inoculating residents.
Nadra Ahmed, executive chair of the National Care Association (NCA), representing small and medium-sized providers, said some staff were refusing a jab due to “cultural issues”.
“Some of it is to do with access and that is that people are just not able to get to where they needed to go to,” she said.
“If they’ve been coming into the care homes, the GPs have not had enough vaccine for the staff as well – they’ve just got enough for the residents, which is the priority.
“And some of it is to do with cultural issues and some is that people just don’t want to have the vaccine.
“We have to convince people that this vaccine is for them. That it’s for the staff to protect them and therefore protect the services they work in.”
In mid-January the PA news agency revealed that up to a fifth of staff in some care home groups had refused a coronavirus vaccine when offered it.
And the National Care Association has estimated that between 6% and 8% of its workers have refused the vaccine.
The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has raised concerns about lower take-up among minority groups, and the government has hired a PR firm to boost numbers.
When will we know how many people are left to vaccinate in this group?
The numbers are expected to be released on Monday, Downing Street said.
There are no government statements on Monday scheduled for the Commons, but health secretary Matt Hancock is set to discuss the figures in a No.10 press conference that evening.
Delivering them in this way would mean he escapes a sustained grilling from MPs.