This letter to practices covers the changes resulting from this move to an essential service. UKHSA and NHS England have created a shared toolkit which helps stakeholders communicate the benefits of the RSV vaccine to older adults and pregnant women, including a series of social media assets, posters, leaflets and videos from NHSE.
General practice will be expected to offer a single dose of the RSV vaccine (Abrysvo) to all adults turning 75 years old on or after 1 September 2024. A one-off catch up campaign for those already aged 75-79 years old on 1 September 2024 will be undertaken at the earliest opportunity. Pregnant women who are at least 28 weeks pregnant on the 1 September will be offered a single dose of the RSV vaccine, with women who become eligible later as they reach 28 weeks gestation remaining eligible until birth.
Opportunistic or on request GP delivery of immunisations for pregnant women will be commissioned as an essential service in the GP contract. Where commissioners may want general practice to routinely provide this service, this will need to be commissioned locally over and above the core opportunistic or on request offer and giving due regard to procurement legislation.
Guidance and patient resources, including the PGD template are available on the the Government website. If practices or commissioners have any queries, please contact [email protected].
RSV vaccination storage
Providers are asked to ensure that they are correctly ordering, receiving, storing and managing the RSV vaccine and any other vaccines they administer as per the storage and distribution instructions in the Green Book Chapter 3.
Following delivery RSV vaccines should be stored in their original package in a refrigerator at 2°C to 8°C. Vaccines including RSV vaccines, should not be stored in non-refrigerated spaces as heat will speed up the decline in potency and monoclonal antibodies, thus reducing the vaccines shelf life. All vaccine cold chain breaches should be reported in accordance local operating procedures and via ImmForm.
All vaccine and cold chain breaches for the London region should be reported to our Immunisation Clinical Advice and Response Service (ICARS) team via the incident form and the team can be contacted by email on [email protected]. The immunisation team can also assist with any clinical queries that practices may have.
RSV vaccination ordering – information for providers on choosing the correct product line
The same RSV vaccine, Abrysvo®, is used for both the older adult and the maternal RSV vaccination programmes; however, vaccine supply for each programme is managed separately by UKHSA for England and the UK. It is therefore important that when providers are ordering Abrysvo® vaccine, orders should be placed for the ImmForm product that is specific to each RSV protection programme.
Product ordered for the infant RSV protection programme (offered to pregnant women) should not be used for the older adult RSV protection programme and vice versa. Immform account holders will see two different product lines and should order accordingly.
General practice providers should order stock from the correct product line on ImmForm. Whilst the majority of vaccination will be in older adults, there may be a few occasions where there is an opportunity to vaccinate a pregnant individual and on these infrequent situations it would be acceptable to use the stock ordered for the older adult programme and then order stock from the maternal vaccine for infant protection product line to backfill that used.
Please also be reminded that the CQRS extraction for the older adults programme will not extract those patients aged 80 years. Where an individual aged 79 years on 31 August 2024 turns 80 and is vaccinated before the 31 August 2025 at age 80, then the practice will be required to manually claim for these individuals. Please send any claims to our generic inbox, providng the detials and attach screen shot evidence showing the number of vaccinations given (no PID). Payments for these claims will be made outside of CQRS.
For general queries and payment claims, please contact the London Imms Team at [email protected]