April 2026 Covid Eligibility

Covid Eligibility

Following feedback from some of you, we’ve reviewed the criteria for the Spring Covid Campaign.

The eligibility criteria for Immunosuppression are tighter than before. Until now, we’ve used Read Code clusters for diagnoses that indicated permanent immunosuppression. However, these clusters no longer align with this tighter criterion.

We’ve updated the eligibility reports accordingly. The main cohorts that are likely to have been affected are Coeliac patients or those with issues that relate to splenectomy/spleen. For patients with MGUS, we still include them, as it's highly likely they should receive the vaccination.

We’ve built reports that you can use to review patients who may be affected. These reports will also pick up patients where their eligibility may have changed for other reasons, e.g. no longer living in a care home:

We’ve also added an additional step to the protocol for administering the COVID vaccine: first check that the patient is eligible and flag if they don’t appear to be. It will still allow the option to exercise clinical judgement and give the vaccine anyway.

Other Vaccine Updates

• We’ve tweaked the criteria for considering a patient to have a vaccine booked. Either an appointment shorter than 4 mins, or shorter than 9 mins with the injection flag applied.
• We’ve updated our option to auto-launch the vaccination template to cover any adult vaccine clinics. This is based on having an appointment booked and being eligible for a vaccination. If you would like this enabling for your practice, let us know (support@welbyinnovate.co.uk)

The consent model we’ve developed seems to be working well. We plan to apply this to other vaccines at our next maintenance update on 13 May.