Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what formal process the Government used to award funding to the Medical Detection Dogs charity as part of the covid-19 response.

No funding award has been made to the Medical Detection Dogs (MDD). Funding for the COVID-19 Detection Dog studies was provided as a grant in line with Test and Trace grant processes to the London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine (LSTHM). The LSTHM is leading a research project including the MDD charity and Durham University to determine whether trained dogs can discriminate pre-symptomatic, asymptomatic and mild cases of COVID-19 from uninfected individuals.