Vaccination programme ‘good value for public money’

A report from the National Audit Office has stated that the Covid-19 vaccination programme met stretching and unprecedented targets.

The vaccine rollout was the biggest and most complex vaccination programme in UK history. In line with its targets, NHS England and NHS Improvement managed to vaccinate two-thirds of adults by mid-July 2021. By the end of October last year, 85 per cent of adults had received two doses of the vaccine, and more than 87 million doses had been administered in total: over six times the number in the previous annual flu vaccination programme.

By the end of October, vaccination programme had spent £5.6 billion out of total available funding of £8.3 billion for the two years to the end of March 2022, including £2.9 billion to purchase vaccines, and £2.2 billion on deploying the vaccine.

The NAO says that securing the supply early and then maintaining this supply was crucial to the successful roll-out. It also says that, based on interviews with bodies involved in running the programme locally, the goodwill, flexibility, and dedication that had been required to set up and run vaccination sites at such pace and scale were key to conveniently accessible vaccine. GPs and community pharmacists have ended up administering many more doses than originally planned – 71 per cent up to the end of October 2021 compared with a planned 56 per cent.

The amount of vaccines supplied but not used has been much lower than the programme initially assumed: the NAO estimated that wastage for England, as at the end of October 2021, was around 4.6 million doses, or four per cent of total supply. Approximately 1.9 million doses delivered to local sites had to be written off due to expiring AstraZeneca doses after the JCVI’s recommendation that people under 40 should preferably not be offered it.

In conclusion, given the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic and the programme’s achievements up to October 2021, the NAO report finds that it has been an effective use of public money to this date.

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “The vaccine programme has been successful in getting early access to what were brand new Covid-19 vaccines, securing supply of them, and administering them to a large proportion of the population at unprecedented speed. The programme must now redouble its efforts to reach those who are not yet vaccinated while also considering what a more sustainable model will involve as it moves out of its emergency phase.”