Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what measures he has put in place to prevent an outbreak of a new covid-19 variant.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the United Kingdom has increased its surveillance and detection capabilities, working closely with international partners, to identify and assess variants more quickly.

In the ‘Living with COVID-19’ plan, the Government has set out that it is taking steps to ensure there are plans in place to maintain resilience against significant resurgences or future variants and remain ready to act if a dangerous variant risks placing unsustainable pressure on the National Health Service.

If a new variant is detected by surveillance systems, a risk assessment will be conducted to establish its severity, which in turn will inform the level of response necessary. To ensure we are fully prepared for any scenario, the UK Health Security Agency has maintained the range of capabilities we would need to consider deploying if we have to scale polymerase chain reaction or lateral flow device testing in response to a variant.