Northern Ireland is to closely follow the clinical prioritisation advised by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), as it rolls out COVID-19 vaccination.

The deployment plan will focus in the coming weeks on:

• Care home residents and staff (including supported living centres where the clinical risk is considered to be similar to a care home);
• Health and social care staff working with patient groups at higher risk (including embedded support staff); staff working in higher risk settings;
• Staff who are themselves at increased personal risk due to being in extremely vulnerable high risk categories or having other defined clinical risk factors.

Vaccination will be dependent on sufficient quantities of vaccine being available, which is expected to be within the first quarter of 2021 for health and social care workers.

Letter from Department of Health to Health and Social Care Trusts