New figures have set out the recorded burden of chickenpox among children in England before routine MMRV vaccination began, as a catch-up offer for eligible young children prepares to open on 1 November 2026. Health-security officials said the 2025 figures included 3,037 hospitalisations among under-18s, alongside GP consultations and absences recorded in monitored practices, nurseries and primary schools.
The catch-up programme will offer a single MMRV dose to eligible children born from January 2020 to August 2022. It will run until 31 March 2028. The offer is aimed at eligible four- to six-year-olds and follows the introduction of routine MMRV vaccination on 1 January 2026.
What the figures show
Officials put the number of chickenpox hospitalisations among people aged under 18 in England at 3,037 during 2025. Infants were identified as the group with the highest hospitalisation rate, but the overall total covers under-18s. It should not be read as a count confined to babies, nor as a count of every child who had chickenpox during the year.
The distinction between a rate and a total matters when interpreting those figures. Identifying infants as the highest-rate group does not mean that all the recorded hospitalisations involved infants. The supplied figures do not give a separate hospitalisation total for that age group, so the under-18 figure remains the appropriate measure to describe.
More than 15,000 GP consultations for chickenpox were recorded in a monitored sample covering about one-third of practices. That figure describes consultations captured within the sample, rather than a complete total for all GP practices in England. It also measures consultations, not the full number of chickenpox cases in the community.
A further 4,117 absences were recorded across 439 nurseries and primary schools. This provides another measure of the illness’s recorded burden in the settings being monitored. It is not an England-wide count of nursery and school absences, and the number of participating settings is important context for understanding its scope.
The hospitalisations, GP consultations and absences describe different aspects of chickenpox’s impact. They should not be added together to produce a single case total. The figures do not establish how many individual children appear across those measures, and the monitored samples do not capture every community case.
Catch-up dates and eligibility
The new offer has a defined birth-date window: eligible children born from January 2020 to August 2022 can receive one MMRV catch-up dose between 1 November 2026 and 31 March 2028. Those dates distinguish the catch-up programme from the routine programme, which began at the start of 2026.
Although the catch-up offer is described as being for young children aged four to six, the stated birth dates provide the precise boundary for the eligible group. The announcement does not describe an unrestricted offer for all children, or a catch-up programme covering the whole under-18 population represented in the hospitalisation figures.
The timing also separates the period measured from the vaccination programme now being introduced. The burden figures relate to 2025, before routine MMRV began. They therefore describe the pre-routine-vaccination position, rather than showing what happened after its introduction or measuring the effect of the forthcoming catch-up offer.
Together, the figures provide a picture of recorded hospital care, GP consultations and absences before routine vaccination started. Their limits remain important: the consultation and absence totals come from monitored samples, while the hospitalisation total concerns under-18s. The catch-up opening marks a separate development, with eligibility and a closing date already specified.
