Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what advice the UK Health Security Agency has given (a) schools and (b) the Department for Education on measures to tackle outbreaks of covid-19 in schools; and if he will place a copy of that advice in the Library.

The Department for Education has provided guidance for schools during the COVID-19 pandemic on the principles of managing local outbreaks, including variants of concern, in education and childcare settings. This guidance is used locally by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) health protection teams and local authorities to work with individual settings. The UKHSA does not provide guidance directly to schools.

The UKHSA was commissioned to provide public health advice to the Department for Education to inform development of its operational guidance. We are unable to provide a copy of this advice as it relates to the development of Government policy on managing outbreaks of COVID-19 in educational settings. However, this advice was informed by standardised outbreak control processes used by local health protection teams in response to outbreaks of other infectious diseases.