Booking your Flu vaccine:
Update 2024-2025
Eligible From 1 September 2024:
- Pregnant women
- Children aged 2 or 3 years on 31 August 2024
- Children in clinical risk groups aged from 6 months to less than 18 years
Eligible From October 2024, exact start date to be confirmed by NHS England in due course:
- Patients 65 years and over
- Patients 18 to 64 clinically at risk (Green Book, Influenza Chapter 19)
- Patients in long-stay residential care homes
- Carers
- Close contacts of immunocompromised individuals
- Frontline workers in a social care setting without employer led OH scheme
- Others deemed at risk based on clinical judgement (add the “Needs Influenza Immunisation” or “Long term indication for seasonal influenza vaccination” code to the patient record- 9ox4).
Clinically At Risk groups
The flu vaccine is recommended for people with certain long-term health conditions, including:
- conditions that affect your breathing, such as asthma (needing a steroid inhaler or tablets), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or cystic fibrosis
- heart conditions, such as coronary heart disease or heart failure
- chronic kidney disease
- liver disease, such as cirrhosis or hepatitis
- some conditions that affect your brain or nerves, such as Parkinson’s disease, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy
- diabetes or Addison’s disease
- a weakened immune system due to a condition such as HIV or AIDS, or due to a treatment such as chemotherapy or steroid medicine
- problems with your spleen, such as sickle cell disease, or if you’ve had your spleen removed
- a learning disability
- being very overweight – a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or above
Speak to your GP surgery or specialist if you have a health condition and you’re not sure if you’re eligible for the flu vaccine.
Why have the dates changed for the flu vaccine?
Based on the evidence flu vaccine effectiveness can wane over time in adults JCVI advised moving the start of the programme for most adults to the beginning of October. This is on the understanding the majority of them will be completed by end of November, closer to the time flu season commonly starts.
Protection from the vaccine lasts longer in children, therefore the priority is to start vaccinating all children (including those in clinical risk groups) from 1 September.
School Children aged 4-17- We are NOT vaccinating school children, therefore they must have them done at school.
We will NOT be vaccinating them.
For information regarding the influenza vaccine, please see the following links:
Flu information in different languages
