Donald Emmanuel, 60, from Coventry, said he was not sure if he was eligible for the Covid vaccine after being invited to book his winter jabs on the NHS.<\/p>\n
“I probably won’t get the Covid because it was difficult to decide what the new criteria was,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So I thought I might as well put myself down for it, even if I don’t, hopefully the people doing the job know whether I do qualify or don’t qualify.”<\/p>\n
The changes to eligibility were made on the advice of a group of independent experts called the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which said Covid was now a “relatively mild disease for most people”.<\/p>\n
Last year the jab was offered for free to anyone 65 years old and over and those with a long list of chronic or long-term conditions.<\/p>\n
That has been changed with the age limit raised to all those who turn 75 before January 2026, plus older care homes residents and people classed as immunosuppressed.<\/p>\n
That includes those undergoing some cancer treatment and transplant patients, along with those living with HIV and some genetic disorders.<\/p>\n
But it means many people with conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, respiratory illnesses, asthma and severe mental illness no longer qualify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Emmanuel, 60, from Coventry, said he was not sure if he was eligible for the Covid vaccine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[105,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-488036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115349284839652941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}