TABLE OF CONTENTS


Introduction

This article explains how the Ardens resources can support your practice in delivering the 2025-26 COVID Spring vaccination programme in line with NHS England guidance. 


Background 

The NHS England guidance for the 2025-26 COVID spring season outlines the following vaccination schedule:


From 13th April 2026, the following groups are eligible:
  • Adults aged 75 years and over
  • Residents in a care home for older adults
  • Individuals aged 6 months and over who are immunosuppressed (as per the Green Book)


How Ardens can help

Ardens resources support practices in planning, notifying, delivering, and evaluating vaccination uptake.


⚠️ Please note: 
  • Ardens searches use SNOMED codes, while the Green Book uses clinical definitions
  • Not all eligibility criteria translate directly into coded data
  • Business rules for payment may differ from clinical eligibility
  • Clinical judgement should guide decisions in ambiguous cases


How to Access our Resources

1. Go to Population Reporting.

2. Expand the Ardens Searches folder.

3. Select 3.11 Vaccinations - COVID Spring 26.



Plan

These resources help GP practices efficiently manage the COVID vaccination programme by identifying eligible patients, organising invitations and follow-ups - including special arrangements for care home and housebound patients.


Cohorts

Use these searches to estimate vaccine needs and plan stock orders. They are not designed for sending invitations:
  • Cohort reports: Shows the total number of patients in each eligible group, regardless of vaccination or declined status.
  • Cohort groups: Shows the total number of patients by groups - asylum seekers, ethnic minority, homeless, housebound, learning disability, SMI and pregnant patients.



Due

These reports focus specifically on patients who are still outstanding for vaccination.

  • Due reports: Shows the total number of patients and by each eligible group. It will exclude those patients that have already had their vaccine or have declined or contraindicated. 
  • Due groups: Shows the total number of patients by groups - asylum seekers, ethnic minority, homeless, housebound, learning disability, SMI and pregnant patients. 


⚠️ Please note: 

  • Patients will not appear in the Due reports until they are 3 months past their previous vaccine dose.
  • Patients may appear in more than one cohort. These reports do not remove patients once invite codes are added, so using them for invites may result in duplicate communications.



Review before 

Before sending out any invites, we recommend reviewing the following reports. These help ensure your invite lists are accurate and clinically appropriate. Some examples include:
  • Consider coding adverse reaction as allergic reaction or issued auto-injector: Highlights any patients coded with a history of an anaphylaxis or anaphylactoid reaction, or who have had an adrenaline auto-injector issued. Consider coding an adverse reaction. 
  • Consider coding contraindication: Identifies patients with a previous contraindication code recorded. Code for this season if appropriate.


Notify

Invites

Invite reports includes all eligible patients (excluding those patients living in a care home or are housebound). These are broken down by 1st, 2nd and 3rd invites. 


Using the reports you can then see breakdowns by cohort or communication method:
  • All cohort
  • Patients with LD, SMI, Dementia, End of Life, or Reasonable Adjustments
  • Contact method (SMS, email, letter, none)


You can export invite lists to CSV and send messages using Accurx, or another third-party platform. Please see this support article for further information on how to do this.  

 
Invitation Coding: After inviting a patient, ensure the appropriate invitation SNOMED code is added to their record. This ensures they move to the correct 2nd or 3rd invite list. Always verify codes before use. A full list is available in our invite code guide.


SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination telephone invitation

1402931000000100

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination first telephone invitation

1402941000000109

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination second telephone invitation

1402951000000107

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination third telephone invitation

1402961000000105

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation email

1403101000000104

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation first email

1403111000000102

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation second email

1403121000000108

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation third email

1403131000000105

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation letter

1402921000000102

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation first letter

1403071000000108

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation second letter

1403081000000105

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation third letter

1403091000000107

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation SMS text message sent

1240781000000106

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation short message service text message

1403031000000106

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation first short message service text message

1403041000000102

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation second short message service text message

1403051000000104

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) vaccination invitation third short message service text message

1403061000000101


⚠️ Please note: 
  • Always check the code each time when adding to the patient record. Ardens are not responsible or liable for the codes above and any incorrect code being batch added to the patient records.
  • There is a two-week timeframe between 1st, 2nd and 3rd invites.
 


Visits 

Separate visit reports are provided for housebound and care home residents to support planning outside of general invite workflows:

  • Care home residents (housebound / not housebound)
  • Housebound but not in a care home


Care home residents and housebound patients are excluded from all the Invite folder. The reports in the 'Visits' folder provide visit lists that can be used to assist in planning these vaccinations.
 


Deliver

To support vaccine delivery and ensure accurate coding, protocols and a template are available to enable consistent and efficient documentation.


Administer

Before clinicians can begin using the protocol, you must first ensure it is fully edited with the relevant vaccination details (e.g. batch numbers,expiry dates). For step by step guidance, please refer to this support article. 


Once edited, each clinician will need to add the protocol to their F12 key.

 
  • Open a patient record and press F12.
  • Right-click on an available letter or number, then select Add.
  • Search for and select the saved "Seasonal vaccinations – COVID-19" protocol (name will be the new saved name of the protocol).

 

The protocol is now ready for use:

  • Press F12 and select the " Seasonal vaccinations – COVID-19" protocol.
  • This will launch a consultation window. Update the Consultation Properties screen if required.
  • A multiple-choice prompt will appear—follow the on-screen prompts to enter the appropriate vaccine information into the patient record.

 




Once you have completed entering the information for the COVID-19 vaccination, the protocol will prompt you to indicate whether you would like to also record administration of the RSV vaccination. Selecting 'Yes' will open the RSV protocol, selecting 'No' will close the protocol.



⚠️ Please note if you are co-administering RSV and COVID vaccinations, for this prompt to navigate to your copied RSV protocol (where you have updated the batch numbers), you must edit this node within the protocol. For information on how to do this please see this support article.


Alternatively, users can record vaccine administration using the Ardens Adult Immunisations template. To access this template, either select Run Template from the ribbon and search for Adult Immunisations, or use the F12 Ardens Launcher - All (Ardens New) template launcher protocol.




Open the Seasonal - COVID-19  page and complete as required.


Evaluate

These resources help practices manage and monitor the COVID vaccination programme by tracking vaccination uptake and providing dashboards to analyse and target patient groups more effectively.


Activity

  • Administration- Monitors vaccine uptake for all cohorts and those not administered due to no response, contraindications and declines.
  • Invitation - Highlights the number of invitations sent.


Insights

For Ardens Manager subscribers, the Vaccinations dashboard provides a clear visual overview of:
  • Eligible cohorts
  • Number of invitations sent
  • Vaccination uptake rates
 
You can also filter and analyse data by:
  • Clinical risk groups
  • Low uptake groups
 
This helps you prioritise and target specific patient populations more effectively.
 
Login to Ardens Manager and access Services > Vaccinations.



 

Additional Learning

To further your understanding of the flu vaccination programme and how to make the most of Ardens resources:

 

 If you require any further assistance on the process above, please contact Ardens support on: 
support@ardens.org.uk