Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department are taking to improve (a) the uptake of and (b) access to Covid-19 treatments.

In England, eligible patients who test positive for COVID-19 will be contacted by a clinician from a COVID Medicines Delivery Unit (CMDU) to discuss treatment suitability. The clinician will be responsible for assessing the patient and deciding which treatment option is most appropriate for them. Guidance has been provided to general practitioners, NHS 111 and hospital doctors to ensure information is available to support patients.

Currently, immunocompromised patients who form part of the high-risk cohort are eligible for receiving COVID-19 treatments within the community following a positive test. The Therapeutics Clinical Review Panel has been established to review the patient cohorts which could be eligible for COVID-19 therapies. On 30 May 2022 the Department published an Independent Advisory Group report which revised the high-risk cohort and included additional groups of patients. As a result of these changes and improved identification by the National Health Service, the cohort of eligible patients has grown to an estimated 1.8 million patients in the United Kingdom. Access to treatments could be extended further if evidence from clinical trials supports doing so. The PANORAMIC study aims to improve understanding of the effectiveness antivirals in preventing hospitalisation and/or death in a largely vaccinated population will provide data for the NHS to determine which patient groups could benefit most from antiviral treatments.