Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many doses of covid-19 vaccine the UK has received from Covax for each month since Covax has been in operation; for what reasons the UK has received doses through Covax; and if he will make a statement.

The UK committed approximately £71 million to the self-financing facility of COVAX, which enables high and upper-middle income countries to pool investments in potential vaccine candidates, and supported its establishment last year. This gives us the option to buy vaccines for up to 20% of the UK population - approximately 27 million doses. The Government has separately committed £548 million to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment, which will distribute 1.2 billion doses of vaccines to developing countries this year.

In addition, I am proud that as part of our commitment to the G7 to donate 100m doses over the course of the next year, the UK has so far donated over 10 million doses to those countries most in need, of which over 6 million have gone to COVAX. Throughout the COVID-19 vaccination programme, vaccine supply and deliveries have been carefully managed by the Vaccine Taskforce to meet the requirements of the domestic vaccination programme as well as support other countries’ domestic campaigns. The recent sharing of 4 million doses with Australia is a good example of this.

I refer the Hon. Member to the answer I gave her on 3rd March 2021 to Question 157070: the UK procured approximately 0.5 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine through COVAX, which were delivered earlier this year. These doses helped the NHS deliver our vaccination programme as quickly as possible. No further doses have been received by the UK from COVAX.