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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans the Government has to ensure covid-19 booster vaccinations keep up with potential new variants.

The Government is taking a number of steps to ensure the UK is prepared to respond to current and emerging COVID-19 variants as quickly as possible. This includes:

• Working closely with vaccine manufacturers and Public Health England (PHE) to understand the efficacy of our current vaccine portfolio against new variants. In order to support this, in May 2021 the Government announced £29.3 million funding to boost PHE/Porton Down’s vaccine efficacy testing capability, including against different virus variants;
• Supporting vaccine manufacturers who have decided to develop variant vaccines; and
• Commissioning the Centre for Process Innovation’s National Biologics Manufacturing Centre to create a ‘variant mRNA library’ to shorten the pathway to deployment of a licensed vaccine. In order to support this, at Budget 2021 the Government announced funding of an additional £5 million on top of a previous £9 million

The Government has confirmed we are planning for a booster programme to take place this autumn. The Vaccine Taskforce is working closely with the Department for Health and Social Care and the National Health Service on this booster programme. The Government will publish further details on the booster programme in due course and the final policy will be informed by advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).