Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) approve and (b) fund specialist treatments for AstraZeneca vaccine damage.

In the very rare event where an individual may have suffered a severe adverse reaction to a COVID-19 vaccine, care and treatment will be managed by National Health Service local specialist services, augmented as appropriate by national specialist advice, with any treatment dependent on the individual’s clinical needs.

The Government remains committed to research to improve the diagnosis and treatment in those rare cases where individuals may have suffered a severe adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Since the start of the pandemic, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has allocated more than £110 million of funding for COVID-19 vaccine research, including consideration of issues around vaccine safety. As part of this, the Department commissioned a £1.6 million programme of work through the NIHR, to understand the mechanisms underlying the occurrence of COVID-19 vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia syndrome, a rare condition of blood clotting with low platelets following vaccination for COVID-19.