PCNs and GPs had delivered half of Covid vaccines by summer 2022, inquiry finds

Primary care networks (PCNs) and GP practices accounted for more than half (53%) of Covid vaccine delivery by the end of June 2022, a report into the UK’s response to the pandemic said.

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry's module 4 report praised the development and rollout of vaccines during the pandemic as an ‘extraordinary feat’ that saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the UK.

The report, published yesterday, said implementation of the vaccination programme in England had been undertaken mainly at regional level and involved working with local partners including PCNs, integrated care systems (ICS's) and directors of public health in local authorities.

This structure meant that the NHS in England could deliver vaccines through 'tried and tested routes' already used for routine vaccination, allowing it to 'quickly scale up deployment'.

But it added that ahead of future pandemics, the NHS needs to improve links between GP and hospital records in order to be able to monitor vaccine safety.

The inquiry heard from a number of witnesses that improvements could be made when it came to the ‘linkage of electronic healthcare data’ and found that there was ‘insufficient linkage’ between GP practice and hospital records.

England’s chief medical offer Professor Chris Whitty told the inquiry that there had always been a difficulty in ‘linking up primary care data, general practice data, with secondary care data’ and that such linkage was crucial in order to ‘identify rare adverse effects’.

The inquiry report said: ‘While the UK’s systems and processes responded effectively to vaccine safety issues, the inquiry concludes that there is nevertheless scope for improvement. This is particularly the case in relation to electronic healthcare records.’

Vaccines and the quick identification of effective treatments such as dexamethasone are ‘two of the success stories of the pandemic’, UK Covid-19 Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett said.

Yet disparities in uptake of vaccination in communities with greater levels of deprivation and in some ethnic minority groups were ‘predictable’ and must be addressed before the next pandemic, she added.

Module 4 of the inquiry, which focused on vaccines and therapeutics, heard that the UK’s position as a world leader in biomedical sciences set it in good stead for developing and rolling out effective vaccines at scale within a year of the first case of Covid-19 being reported.

The UK developed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and authorised two others. One study estimated almost 450,000 lives were saved by the vaccination programme in England alone.

In 2021, approximately 132 million Covid-19 vaccinations were given across the four nations, making it the largest vaccination programme in UK history and by June 2022 about 87% of the UK population aged over 12 years had been vaccinated with two doses, the report said.

Likewise, dexamethasone was being used to save the lives of hospitalised Covid-19 patients by June 2020, within hours of trial results confirming its effectiveness.

By the following March, it is estimated to have saved 22,000 lives in the UK and one million across the globe.

The report also said that the rapid spread of false and misleading information online had fuelled vaccine hesitancy globally, and a lack of confidence in authority was also a ‘significant factor’ in the UK.

Baroness Hallett called on action to be taken across all four nations to tackle rising vaccine hesitancy and build trust within communities with lower vaccine uptake and to improve access to vaccines before the next pandemic.

The report suggested five measures to ensure the UK is better placed to develop and deliver vaccines in any future pandemic, which include:

• Establishing a pharmaceutical expert advisory panel;
• Producing targeted vaccination strategies and communications to increase vaccine uptake and reduce inequalities;
• Improving monitoring and evaluation of vaccine uptake and delivery to understand the most effective ways of increasing vaccine uptake;
• Facilitating regulatory bodies’ access to healthcare records;
• Reforming the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme.

Baroness Hallett, chair of the UK Covid Inquiry, said: ‘We cannot know when, but there will be another pandemic. My recommendations, taken as a whole, should mean that the UK is better prepared for that pandemic.

‘I urge governments across the UK to work individually and collectively to implement these recommendations, in full and in a timely manner.’