Thanks to Covid-19 vaccination, we have seen a substantial weakening of the link between Covid-19 infections and hospitalisations \/ deaths in the UK. But we don’t yet know how well this protection from serious illness and death will persist in the longer-term. We are also seeing “vaccine fatigue” set in with many people not keen on booster vaccines.<\/p>\n
For the UK, the future challenges will include determining how frequently and in what groups Covid-19 booster vaccines are needed; ensuring a high take-up of vaccinations in all eligible groups; and having vaccines that are updated when necessary to protect against new variants. We have already had one additional booster vaccination programme in the UK this year; which targeted people 75 and over, residents of care homes, and people who are immunocompromised. A larger booster programme is planned for later this year that will target a wider range of people, including NHS staff.<\/p>\n
Although some people are very optimistic about the future because of the recent decline in the number of Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths in the UK, this optimism does depend on maintaining high levels of Covid-19 immunity in the population. This won\u2019t be easy and we will see some areas of the UK and some population groups with low take-up of booster vaccines. We therefore need to ensure that we have a strong vaccine delivery system in place that can work with local communities to ensure a high-take up of vaccination \u2013 particularly in the most clinically vulnerable groups at highest risk of serious illness and death.<\/p>\n
Other Covid-19 control measures are also important and can be implemented when necessary, but ultimately it is vaccination that will allow UK society to function normally rather than these other measures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thanks to Covid-19 vaccination, we have seen a substantial weakening of the link between Covid-19 infections and hospitalisations \/ deaths in the UK. But we don’t yet know how well this protection from serious illness and death will persist in the longer-term. We are also seeing “vaccine fatigue” set in with many people not keen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[274465],"class_list":["post-877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":878,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}