Coronavirus: Drugs

(asked on 22nd June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department is doing to ensure that medicines which have the potential to make patients less vulnerable to covid-19 by removing them from NHS Digital’s high risk shielded patient list identification, including biologics for severe asthma, are appraised by NICE in a timely manner.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 28th June 2021

The 2019 Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access commits the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to publishing draft recommendations on all newly licensed treatments around the time of licensing, with final guidance within 90 days of marketing authorisation wherever possible. NICE may not always be able to meet this timescale for individual topics for a range of reasons, including where companies request a longer appraisal timescale.

During the first wave of COVID-19, NICE prioritised its work programme and only published guidance between March to June 2020 that was either therapeutically critical or related to addressing diagnostic or therapeutic interventions for COVID-19. Topics related to treatments for patients who were considered highly vulnerable were classed as therapeutically critical and were prioritised. Since June 2020, NICE has aimed to publish guidance in line with its standard timescales. Of the topics delayed during March to June 2020, all have been restarted where possible.

Reticulating Splines