Nearly 13 million fewer people will be offered an Autumn booster for Covid this year fuelling concerns we could be heading for a new wave of the virus.
The Government said that pensioners aged 65 to 74 will no longer be able to for a free jab. This amounts to 6 million people, of which just over half took up the offer last Autumn.
Meanwhile, 6.9 million people in “clinical risk” groups such as pregnant women and people with chronic heart and liver disease will also be excluded for the first time – although only 23 per cent of them took up the offer last year.
However, one million immunosuppressed people with weak immune systems will continue to be eligible.
As such, the vaccine will only be offered to people aged 75 years and over, residents in care homes and people who are immunosuppressed aged 6 months and over.
Across the autumn and winter, a peak of 58 per cent of those aged 70-74-years-old had been vaccinated of the 65-69-year-old cohort, a peak of 48 per cent was achieved between October 2024 and February 2025. In October 2024, cases per 100,000 peaked at 6.38 per 100,000 across a seven-day period before falling to 1.48 in February.
In total, the number of people who can get a free booster will fall from 19.7m last Autumn to 6.8 million this season – a drop of 12.9 million or 65 per cent, according to UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data analysed by Bob Hawkins, a data scientist who works with Independent Sage.
Taken together with the rapid spread of the highly-contagious XFG, or Stratus, variant, which now accounts for the majority of Covid infections in the UK – and waning immunity from previous infections and jabs among most of the population – scientists believe it is only a matter of time before we see a new wave.
Children going back to school and the cooling weather pushing people back inside means that conditions in September and October could start to push cases up, scientists warn – although quite when any new wave would peak, and at what level, is far from clear.
“The Government’s decision to restrict the free Autumn Covid booster to people over the age of 75 and those who are immunosuppressed is very shortsighted,” Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, told The i Paper.
“Waning immunity to Covid in the population and the continued emergence of new variants warrants at least providing vaccine cover for all those over 65 as well as NHS and care workers,” he said.
“While targeting the most vulnerable is likely to prevent a surge in hospitalisations, it ignores the burden of infection in the general population, the impact of sickness on work and school attendance, and the increased risk of infection causing long-term effects.
“It also means that the Covid virus can continue to spread and change, running the risk of new, more dangerous virus variants emerging,” Professor Young added.
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Covid cases have been much lower this year than for most of the pandemic – and, despite a steady increase in recent weeks, they are still well below the level they were at most of last year.
However, the latest data indicates they may start to be rising – although scientists say it is too early to say for sure.
The latest UKHSA data shows that in the week to Friday August 1, the proportion of people in hospital with symptoms who tested positive for Covid in England increased by 17 per cent to 7.3 per cent.
This infection rate is much higher than for the general public and cannot be taken as an accurate indicator of trends in wider society, scientists caution.
But they say that the measure – known as the positivity rate – is the best indicator we have in the summer (when population surveillance of Covid ceases) and is seen as giving a reasonable sense of general trends.
The latest figure compares to 7.1 per cent on June 22, 5.0 per cent on May 8th, 2.3 per cent in January and 14.7 per cent last October.
“It’s very concerning that these groups are no longer to be offered free Autumn boosters,” Simon Williams, a behavioural scientist and public health expert at Swansea University, told The i Paper.
“We are already seeing signs of a Covid summer wave in countries including the US, and it is generally the case that the risk of seeing higher rates increases when large numbers of people haven’t had an infection recently, or haven’t been vaccinated recently,” he said.
Professor Paul Hunter, of University of East Anglia, said he “suspects we will see some increase in cases as we move towards the end of the year but I don’t know how big this will be.”
However, he is less concerned about the decision to reduce the number of people being offered free boosters because the UK already has “high levels of population immunity” from previous vaccines and infections – meaning that “even a good vaccine is not going to be that effective”.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “This decision is based on expert advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which continuously monitor and evaluate emerging scientific evidence on COVID-19 vaccines.
“The autumn 2025 vaccination programme will target people who are at the highest risk of serious illness to protect the most vulnerable.
“We encourage anyone who is eligible for COVID-19 vaccination to come forward for vaccination this autumn.”
The dates have not been announced yet for this year’s Autumn booster campaign but last year it started on October 3.
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