Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to protect the (1) primary, and (2) secondary, immunodeficiency community against COVID-19 this winter.

On 29 November 2021, the Government accepted advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) in response to the emergence of the Omicron variant. The JCVI advised that severely immunosuppressed individuals who have completed their primary course of a COVID-19 vaccine of three primary doses, should be offered a booster vaccination, with a minimum of three months between the third primary and booster dose. Those who have not yet received their third primary dose may receive the third dose immediately with a booster dose in three months, in line with the clinical advice on optimal timing.

Immunocompromised individuals are a priority cohort for research into therapeutic and prophylaxis treatments such as monoclonal antibody therapies, novel antivirals, and repurposed compounds. For those patients in the highest risk cohort who have not been hospitalised, treatments can be accessed from COVID Medicines Delivery Units where clinically eligible. These treatments include the anti-viral drug molnupiravir and the monoclonal antibody infusion sotrovimab. The monoclonal antibody treatment ronapreve is available to treat the most vulnerable hospitalised patients where genotyping shows they are not infected by the Omicron variant. Where vulnerable patients with hospital-onset COVID-19 which is confirmed as the Omicron variant, they may be eligible to receive sotrovimab.

In addition, oral antiviral treatments are available through PANORAMIC national study, run by the University of Oxford. This study is open to clinically eligible individuals in the United Kingdom.