Most adults under the age of 40 are currently being offered an alternative to the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine due to a link with rare blood clots.
But the spread of the highly-transmissible Indian Covid variant could lead to that vaccine being offered to under-40s again, a Government adviser said.
It could help to speed up the rollout of jabs amid concerns over the variant. Cases more than doubled in a week and England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has said it will become the dominant strain in the UK.
Professor Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol and a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), was asked if the JCVI would look again at the recommendation that people under 40