Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the availability of AstraZeneca and Novovax Covid vaccines for people with severe allergies who cannot receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

The Government continues to be guided by the advice of the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines. The vaccines recommended by the JCVI for the autumn campaign are Moderna mRNA (Spikevax) bivalent. and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA (Comirnaty) bivalent. The Government has accepted the JCVI’s advice that in exceptional circumstances the Novavax vaccine, Nuvaxovid, may be used when no other clinically suitable United Kingdom-approved COVID-19 vaccine alternative is available.