Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of advances made by open sourcing research in relation to testing vaccines and treatments for COVID-19; what steps they have taken to ensure cooperation with scientific and research institutions in real time; with which countries such cooperation occurs; and in particular, whether they cooperate with such institutions in (1) South Korea, (2) Israel, (3) China, and (4) other G20 members.

Public Health England and other United Kingdom scientists and clinicians are members of several World Health Organization (WHO) working groups that cover new therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics and sero-epidemiology. There is excellent collaboration across many countries, including those in the G20.

Data and presentations have been shared at these working groups by many countries including China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia, the Netherlands, France, Canada, the UK and the United States of America. There are publicly available outputs from these groups on the WHO Blueprint Research and Development website, one of which is the draft landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines.