Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking with Public Health England (PHE) to prepare for outbreaks of (a) covid-19 and (b) other viruses that may occur in the future; and what plans PHE has to use the facilities at the future site at Harlow for those preparations.

We are currently responding across all sectors to the COVID-19 virus and we will incorporate any lessons learnt from this outbreak, into future planning.

Public Health England has recently published guidance for COVID-19 and regularly updates guidance on a range of topics. For example, guidance for staying at home and educational settings were published on 12 March and can be found at the following link.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coronavirus-covid-19-list-of-guidance

In 2015 the Government confirmed £400 million of capital funding to proceed with development of the planned Public Health England science campus and headquarters in Harlow. Enabling work is underway on site, and the programme will progress to Full Programme Business Case approval later this year.