Follow the science on Covid vaccines: broaden eligibility
Neil Gray MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Health & Social Care, Jenni Minto MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Public Health & Women’s Health, and to the members of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee and well as party health and social care spokespersons
Reducing the availability of the NHS Covid vaccine endangers the lives of people at high clinical risk in particular and will result in more people suffering long-term illness and disability.
The Scottish Government is following Westminster in restricting NHS Covid vaccine access further than was the case in 2024, when access was already significantly restricted from 2022. Far fewer groups of people are now eligible for a Covid vaccine than the World Health Organisation recommends. Access is now more restricted than even in Trump’s USA, let alone in most of the rest of Europe. Unlike in autumn 2024, NHS vaccines are no longer available during pregnancy, to people at particularly high clinical risk (e.g. from heart disease, serious respiratory conditions or diabetes), not to health workers and care home staff. Covid boosters have never been offered to teachers. Only elderly people aged 75 and over and people meeting the criteria on grounds of being immunocompromised can now get them. For others, the only option is to pay up to £100.- each privately, and many don’t know about that option, even if they could afford it.
This is based on advice by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which the Scottish government is under no obligation to follow. JCVI advised drastic restrictions to vaccines based solely on very limited cost considerations, looking at acute hospitalisation and death only, not at Long Covid or other long-term damage from the virus, nor at or the resulting wider impact on public health, NHS Scotland’s capacity, on labour market inactivity, sickness absence from work or school, and other social and economic impacts.
This decision endangers the lives of people at high clinical risk in particular and will result in more people suffering long-term illness and disability.
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Neil Gray MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Health & Social Care, Jenni Minto MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Public Health & Women’s Health, and to the members of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee and well as party health and social care spokespersons
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[Your Name]
Dear MSPs
We call on the Scottish Government to reverse its decision to restrict eligibility for Covid vaccination to far fewer groups of people than the World Health Organisation and most governments across the global North recommend, and to explain the reasons why the decision to exclude most of the population, even people at the highest clinical risk from Covid, from access to the vaccine was made. We also call on the Scottish Government to explain why the Novavax Covid vaccine has never been offered by NHS Scotland, not even as an alternative to those who have had adverse reactions to the Covid vaccines available (albeit to ever fewer people) through NHS Scotland
World Health Organisation guidance recommends annual Covid booster vaccination for anybody aged 50+, anyone with underlying health problems and healthcare workers, as well as one Covid vaccine during each pregnancy. The Scottish Government initially followed that guidance once the initial Covid vaccination programme was finished, and, rightly, extended it to both care workers and unpaid carers. However, it has now, for reasons never made public, decided to follow advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to restrict the vaccine to people aged 75+ and those considered immunocompromised. The clear evidence that repeat Covid infections have caused a large and growing percentage of the population to have immune dysregulation (making them more susceptible to viral and bacterial infections) is ignored here.
The JCVI advises the UK government and the Scottish Government is under no obligation to follow its advice. We call on the Scottish Government to explain why it has followed their recommendations even though they go against the recommendations of similar advisory bodies in almost all other countries and against the World Health Organisation’s guidance.
Regular Covid vaccination significantly reduces the risk of death and severe acute illness, which remains unacceptably high in people at clinical risk due to pre-existing health conditions. It also reduces the risk of Long Covid as shown, for example, by a systematic literature review published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in March 2025. JCVI has made it clear that they have not considered the impacts of Long Covid nor other long-term damage from the virus, nor at or the resulting wider impact on public health, NHS Scotland’s capacity, on labour market inactivity, sickness absence from work or school, and other social and economic impacts.
Excluding most people, even those at particular high clinical risk, from access to free Covid vaccines thus means more avoidable deaths, more NHS Scotland beds needed to treat people with acute Covid infections, more people developing Long Covid and people with Long Covid being at higher risk of their condition worsening due to reinfection. Healthcare workers and teachers have a particularly high incidence of Long Covid because of their constant exposure to the virus. In turn, this means more pressure on healthcare and education, and on the economy and society at large, due to the high and growing burden of chronic illness coupled with frequent bouts of acute illness.
We therefore ask for an immediate revision of the decision to restrict Covid vaccine access to people aged 75+ and those classed as immunocompromised, and for the Scottish Government to explain the basis for their vaccine policy decisions and account for those decisions to the Scottish Parliament and people.