Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress he has made on negotiations with the EMA to license the AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine 4120Z002.

There have been no such negotiations as the European Medicines Agency is the independent regulatory body which determines the vaccines approved for use in the European Union.

No AstraZeneca vaccine doses branded as Covishield have been administered in the United Kingdom. Batch number 4120Z002 was approved by the UK’s regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and branded as the ’COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca’ which is now known commercially as ‘Vaxzevria’. The EU has recently published a list of vaccines it sees as equivalent to those authorised by the EMA, which includes all approved vaccines administered in the UK.