Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the timescale between first and second covid-19 vaccinations.

Public Health England (PHE) is evaluating the effectiveness of short and long vaccination schedules and will report the findings in due course. PHE has reported vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease, hospitalisation and death using two doses in the weekly COVID-19 vaccine surveillance reports, which are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-surveillance-report

As the majority of individuals in the United Kingdom received their second dose with the extended schedule, these results largely reflect extended schedules. These findings suggest that effectiveness is at least as high as that reported elsewhere where shorter dosing intervals are being used.