Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of whether there will be sufficient stocks of covid-19 vaccine doses available for the Covax facility to distribute to low and middle income countries after the UK and other high income countries have secured their own bilateral deals for potential covid-19 vaccines.

The COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) aims to provide 1 billion doses for high-risk populations in up to 92 developing countries in 2021, at the same pace as for richer countries. The UK has committed up to £548 million in Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the COVAX AMC. Through this investment, the UK is supporting the fair and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines for up to 500 million people in low and middle-income countries during 2021. We have made our financial commitment early precisely to ensure that there will be supplies for AMC countries once safe and effective vaccines are available.

The COVAX AMC is the only ODA mechanism investing in expanding the supply of a portfolio of vaccines explicitly for use in developing countries. It provides the highest chance of successfully securing access for these countries during 2021, regardless of any country's bilateral deals.