Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the provision of covid-19 booster vaccinations to community pharmacies.

Community pharmacies have been taking part in the COVID-19 vaccination programme since January 2021. NHS England has recently changed the model for procuring COVID-19 vaccination services to an opt-in model. All community pharmacies who applied, and met the minimum requirements, received a contract to deliver COVID-19 vaccinations. This enabled more pharmacies to support the autumn 2023/24 booster campaign, administering COVID-19 vaccinations alongside flu vaccinations, which are also increasingly being administered in these settings.