Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when the results of Government’s tests on the effectiveness of the the drug evusheld against covid-19 omicron subvariants will be published.

The Department’s Antivirals and Therapeutics Taskforce is scoping the potential for pre-exposure prophylaxis, alongside experts from the Prophylaxis Oversight Group, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the multi-agency group RAPID C-19. As part of this evaluation, treatments must demonstrate sufficient efficacy against Omicron and new variants to avoid escape mutations. Therefore, the UKHSA is undertaking further testing on Evusheld’s effectiveness against the Omicron variant. The timing of these results is dependent on the success of the testing assays, therefore we are currently unable to confirm when these results may be published.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has authorised Evusheld for use in the United Kingdom. However, it has noted in its Summary of Product Characteristics that no clinical data is available on the use of Evusheld against Omicron variants and there is uncertainty on the dosage and duration of effectiveness, as in vitro data has shown reduced efficacy against some variants, including Omicron.