Recommendation 24

NHSE&I recognised that its goal of vaccinating the top four priority groups by mid- February was a huge task.67 We noted that it would be essential for Departments to be clear in the language they used to describe progress with the vaccine programme to avoid over-promising and under-delivering. We asked what counted as a vaccine having been offered and how it was monitoring and reporting progress. NHSE&I explained that it could not force people to take the vaccine, so was monitoring progress on the basis of how many people had been offered a vaccine.68 It planned the roll-out of the vaccine on the assumption that 75% of people who are offered the vaccine will take it.69 We were concerned by the potential for confusion between expected take-up and figures currently in the public domain about the number of people who will be vaccinated. If, for example, 25% of each cohort choose not to take-up the offer of a vaccine, then the programme would not be able to meet the expected number of people being vaccinated.70 NHSE&I told us that national data on the roll-out of the vaccine had been published each week and would now be published on a daily basis. It confirmed that it expected to publish localised data by region, and by local authority if possible, within the next 7–10 days.71 However, while government aims to have offered a vaccine to 12.2 million people by 15-February, its daily and weekly progress reports only include statistics on the number of “announced vaccinations” i.e. vaccinations that have been administered rather than how many have been offered.72