Pharmacy-led vaccination centres will be paid an enhanced fee of £20 per Covid vaccine between 25 December and 3 January, in a bid to support them to ‘set up additional clinics’.
NHS England said this comes ‘in light of the further vaccination effort required in response to the Omicron variant’.
Pharmacy sites were already being paid an enhanced fee of £15 per jab Monday to Saturday, and £20 on Sundays and bank holidays during the booster drive.
The news comes as the Government last weekend brought back the target date for offering all over-18s a Covid booster jab between now and 31 December.
The UK is currently facing a fresh wave of Covid infections, with the new Omicron variant showing signs of spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant.
It comes as the Prime Minister has written NHS staff saying the Government and nation are ‘right behind them’ through the booster campaign.
NHS England vaccination fee note in full
NHS England’s bulletin said: ‘In our 7 December operational note, we announced an increase to the Item of Service (IoS) fee to £15 per COVID-19 vaccination (administered on weekdays and Saturdays from 1 December 2021 to 31 January 2022), and an increase to £20 per COVID-19 vaccination (administered on a Sunday or Bank Holidays) over the same period.
In light of the further vaccination effort required in response to the Omicron variant, we are now extending the IoS fee to £20 per COVID-19 vaccination administered between 25 December 2021 to 3 January 2022 inclusive. This is to support PCN and CP sites to set up additional clinics during this period.
The IoS fee will continue to be £20 per COVID-19 vaccination administered on Sundays in December 2021 and Sundays in January 2022 as previously announced. The ES and LES will shortly be updated to reflect this.’
A version of this story first appeared on our sister website, Pulse.
Have your say
Please add your comment in the box below. You can include links, but HTML is not permitted. Please note that comments are not moderated before publication and the views expressed are those of the user and do not reflect the views of The Pharmacist. Remember that submission of comments is governed by our Terms and Conditions. You can also read our full guidelines on article comments here – but please be aware that you are legally liable for any libellous or offensive comments that you make. If you have a complaint about a comment or are concerned that a comment breaches our terms and conditions, please use the ‘Report this comment’ function to alert our web team.