It has now been five years since the emergence of Covid, and nearly four since Boris Johnson announced what he had dubbed ‘Freedom Day’. But for some in Clinically Vulnerable Families (CVF), true restoration of their freedoms never came. Reduced social interactions, isolation, and the ever-present risks of exposure to airborne viruses remains a daily reality, and now, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s Module 4 (focused on Vaccines & Therapeutics) has laid bare the systemic failures that abandoned us when we needed protection the most. For CVF this isn’t just about reviewing a past crisis, as the impacts remain far from over.
The Unequal 'Exit' from the Pandemic
The stark truth the Inquiry has highlighted is this: while the vaccine rollout allowed most people to resume normal life, the Clinically Vulnerable (CV) were not sufficiently considered, and inadequately protected. The evidence paints a bleak picture of systemic oversight, government reluctance, and a deepening inequality between the healthy majority and those still at risk.
At the heart of this issue is a devastating reality - there were and are barriers to vaccine access, high-risk populations were denied access to life-saving prophylactics offered in all other OECD countries, antivirals remain difficult to access and are consequently underused, and a two-tier health strategy valued ‘efficiency and scale’ of systems over the safety of individuals.
Vaccines: A Promise Undermined by Inequality
The vaccine rollout was heralded as the UK’s greatest public health success of the pandemic, and in many respects, that is true. Many millions of lives were saved. The NHS was protected. But for Clinically Vulnerable people, the story is different. The CVF have exposed some glaring failures:
Access Barriers Created a Postcode Lottery:
Some vaccination centres, planned for ‘efficiency’, were unsafe for high-risk populations- poor ventilation, weak mask enforcement whilst using poor quality unsuitable masks, and overcrowding led some to contract Covid whilst receiving vaccinations.
Many Clinically Vulnerable people were asked to travel long distances on public transport - risking infection to access the very protection meant to keep them safe.
Booster Chaos and Data Failures:
The ever-changing eligibility rules for boosters left many confused and struggling to access their next dose.
Data systems were in disarray, while many with risk factors had not been identified properly, meaning some never received timely invites for vaccination.
Children's vaccinations: More on this next...
Children’s Vaccinations
Perhaps one of the most damning aspects of Module 4 is the JCVI’s reluctance to vaccinate Clinically Vulnerable children - a decision which led to avoidable illness and, in some cases, deaths.
The UK was painfully slow to offer vaccines to at-risk children, and even slower in considering the impact of transmission within high-risk households.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) focused solely on direct risks to children from the vaccine itself, disregarding the risks from what the CMO's had identified as "inevitable" infection, or wider impact on their vulnerable families.
Parents told CVF that they were left "despairing and helpless" as they watched healthy 18-year-olds receive vaccines months before their high-risk children.
Accessing Covid vaccinations remains challenging for Clinically Vulnerable children and those in CV households. The limited number of vaccination sites equipped to handle the specific needs of Clinically Vulnerable children has always made it difficult for parents to secure timely vaccinations for their children. Also, those under 18 living in CV households face obstacles in obtaining private vaccinations, as most clinics do not vaccinate children.
The Scandal of Evusheld: A Lifeline That Never Came
For those who are immunosuppressed and unable to mount a sufficient immune response to vaccination, prophylactics - preventative antibody treatments - should have provided them the same protection as the vaccine. However, the UK government never procured Evusheld, a life-saving cocktail of synthetic antibodies which was made available in other equivalent countries.
Evusheld was made by the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, and was approved by the MHRA but never made available on the NHS.
The government delayed its decision for months, by which point newer variants had reduced its effectiveness.
Dame Kate Bingham condemned the decision to the Inquiry, stating that leaving the immunosuppressed without protection was “ethically and morally wrong.”
Bingham quoted Jonathan Van-Tam for the record "I consider cost, including cost-effectiveness and practicality considerations, to be entirely rational factors when making decisions on neutralising antibody procurement."
Dame Kate Bingham, former chair of the UK Vaccines Taskforce (Video image credit: UK Covid-19 Inquiry)
Antivirals: A System Destined to Fail
A subset of Clinically Vulnerable people who contract Covid need antivirals as an emergency treatment. They should be prescribed and made available rapidly to those who are on the eligibility list, regardless of symptom severity during triage. Administering antiviral treatments promptly, when viral levels are low, enhances their effectiveness and leads to better patient outcomes. Early intervention has been shown to improve viral clearance and reduce the duration of symptoms.
CVF found that the antiviral administration system was riddled with barriers and inefficiencies:
Many CV people find themselves battling bureaucracy: passed between GPs, NHS 111, NHS 119 and Covid Medicine Delivery Units (CMDUs), only for most to ultimately be denied treatment.
Paxlovid, the most available antiviral, is not suitable for use by many Clinically Vulnerable people.
Despite investing £3 billion in antiviral stockpiles, only 25% of referred, eligible people were actually treated - which is a damning indictment of systemic failures. And that figure only accounts for those who reached triage; the true percentage of those unable to access treatment remains unknown.
A Government That Stopped Caring
By mid-2021, it became clear that the UK government was betting everything on vaccines - and neglecting other vital tools. The inquiry discovered that prophylactics and therapeutics were deprioritised, and so Clinically Vulnerable people were left with a grim reality: vaccines waned after 5-6m or did not work effectively for some, no preventative prophylactic was purchased because it was cheaper to keep people at home indefinitely, antiviral treatments were not readily available if people were infected, and the government had moved on and no longer seemed to care.
The overall trajectory continues to be worrying.
In Autumn 2025, many millions of Clinically Vulnerable people risk losing access to Covid vaccines via the NHS altogether.
There is no planning for long-term protections, which must include improvements to air quality, and this means that the most at-risk people in our society continue to be disposable in public health policy.
A Call for Justice and Change
Clinically Vulnerable Families' recommendation is clear: we must protect the rights of Clinically Vulnerable people in law.
We are calling for Clinical Vulnerability to be a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, ensuring that our needs are no longer an afterthought in public health policy. We must take action to prevent discrimination and ensure appropriate ‘reasonable adjustments’ - practical changes to help Clinically Vulnerable people access work, education, healthcare, and public spaces safely.
Discrimination:
Exclusion from Workplaces & Public Spaces: CV people can face barriers to employment or social participation due to inadequate protections, leading to isolation and financial hardship.
Denial of Equal Healthcare Access: Some CV people struggle to access timely medical care due to a lack of consideration of their access needs.
Education Disparities: CV children and young people, and those in CV households, can face barriers to attending school safely, with limited remote learning options or a lack of tailored risk assessments.
Lack of Emergency Protections: During health crises, CV people can be deprioritised for interventions because their needs are considered through the lens of other equality groups with different needs.
Public & Institutional Neglect: The needs of CV people are frequently overlooked in policy decisions, leading to a lack of accommodations in public health strategies and in emergency planning.
Clinically Vulnerable people must be explicitly protected under equality laws to ensure equal access to employment, education, healthcare, and social participation.
We demand robust, long-term plans to consider those with health needs - because a pandemic response that fails the vulnerable isn’t just inadequate; it is a fundamental betrayal of public health.
“We Were Forgotten - But We Won’t Be Silent”
For Clinically Vulnerable people, the Covid pandemic did not end on Freedom Day. It continues in every choice between safety and social participation, every booster or antiviral fight, every day spent living reduced lives, because the world moved on while too many were simply left behind.
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has given us a voice. But the question remains: will this government finally listen?