Dr. Lucy Jessop:

The HPV vaccine is one of a number of vaccines we provide in second level schools. We also provide some vaccinations in primary schools. Early in the pandemic last year, school buildings were closed for quite a number of months so the vaccination programmes had to be paused. However, the school teams worked very hard to catch up on the programmes over the summer through special clinics, and our uptake was very good in the previous academic year. Something similar is likely to happen this academic year. The teams did vaccinations in the first term of this academic year and we have had uptake of the HPV vaccine and the Tdap vaccine given at the same time. We are now looking to restart these clinics, either through going into schools or mass vaccination clinics to catch up. This is likely to be the model in terms of catching up and making sure the programmes are finished before the start of the next academic year.