The UK health authorities began rolling out their winter vaccine schedule for the most medically vulnerable on Monday, brought forward from a planned early October rollout amid concerns around the new Covid variant BA.2.86.

The National Health Service (NHS) said residents of older adult care homes and people who are housebound will begin receiving their Covid and flu vaccinations this week and other high-risk groups will begin to be invited to get their “top-up protection” ahead of winter from next week.

While the variant, BA.2.86, has not been classified as a “variant of concern” by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), it is being monitored closely due to its proclivity to mutate.

“While BA.2.86 has a significant number of mutations to the viral genome compared to other currently circulating Covid-19 variants, the data so far is too limited to draw
firm conclusions about the impact this will have on the transmissibility, severity or immune escape properties of the virus,” said Dr Renu Bindra, an Indian-origin
Incident Director for the UKHSA.