Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 23 January 2024 to Question 9963 on Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme: Coronavirus, how many and what proportion of those 163 claimants have received an award in relation to a COVID-19 vaccination specifically.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Of the 163 claims to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme that received an award between 31 December 2020 and 16 January 2024, 160 or 98% were claims related to COVID-19.
Asked by: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many adverse events were registered with covid-19 vaccines from batch number 4120Z001 via the yellow card scheme; and whether more serious adverse events were registered with covid-19 vaccines from batch number 4120Z001 via the yellow card scheme than other batches of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca covid-19 vaccine.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) continuously monitors the safety of vaccines through a variety of pharmacovigilance approaches including the Yellow Card scheme. As part of our signal detection processes all adverse reaction reports received by the Yellow Card scheme are assessed and cumulative information reviewed at regular intervals. Our analysis of the Yellow Card reports accounts for product batch number.
The MHRA has received 7112 spontaneous suspected adverse drug reaction (ADR) reports in the United Kingdom relating to the COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccine with batch number 4120Z001 up to and including 17 January 2024. Our analysis of the Yellow Card reports including review of serious adverse reactions reported has not resulted in any safety concerns with the batch number 4120Z001 for the COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccine.
Not all batches of the COVID-19 vaccines are the same size, and some batches may have had more wastage than other batches or be distributed more widely outside of the UK. Therefore, we would not expect the number of ADR reports for all batches to be the same as they have been administered to different numbers of patients. Furthermore, different batches would have been used at different stages of the vaccination campaign, and in different patient groups, which could also impact reporting rates.
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many claimants to the Vaccine Damage Payment scheme (a) have been and (b) are due to be awarded money for a life-changing disability as a result of a covid-19 vaccine as of 5 February 2024.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
As of 5 February 2024, 163 claims to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme relating to COVID-19 have received an award. 154 of these claimants have received their payment, and in the remaining nine cases, the NHS Business Services Authority is awaiting relevant information from the claimant in order to process the payment. This gives a total of £18,480,000 paid out to successful COVID-19 related claims, with an additional £1,080,000 pending.
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much money has been awarded by the vaccine damage payment scheme to claimants who suffered disabilities as a result of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
As of 5 February 2024, 163 claims to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme relating to COVID-19 have received an award. 154 of these claimants have received their payment, and in the remaining nine cases, the NHS Business Services Authority is awaiting relevant information from the claimant in order to process the payment. This gives a total of £18,480,000 paid out to successful COVID-19 related claims, with an additional £1,080,000 pending.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on what date the Oxford–AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine Vaxzevria was withdrawn from general public administration in the UK; and for what reason.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
AstraZeneca completed its COVID-19 vaccine supply agreement with the Government in 2022. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 vaccine booster programme in September 2021, in line with advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the vaccines deployed in the national programme have primarily been mRNA vaccines that were considered to provide a strong booster response.
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help ensure that health and social care staff continue to have access to free covid-19 testing.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
From 1 April 2023, the Government implemented changes to COVID-19 testing. These changes aligned COVID-19 more closely with the management of other respiratory infections. As part of this change, routine symptomatic testing of staff in high-risk settings ended. Staff testing has continued in a limited number of the most high-risk settings to protect particularly vulnerable people. This includes hospice staff with symptoms and some National Health Service staff with symptoms, working on inpatient wards with severely immunosuppressed patients. Information on testing in these settings is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/covid-19-testing-during-periods-of-low-prevalence
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made a recent assessment of the impact of covid-19 infection rates among health and social care staff on the delivery of frontline health and social care services.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Sickness absence rates, including COVID-19 absence, among National Health Service staff are currently collected and published by NHS England. Data is published monthly in their COVID-19 data release and also weekly, for a subset of providers within the Urgent and Emergency Care Situation Reports for 2023/24. The monthly and weekly data sets, respectively, are available at the following links:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
Similarly for adult social care settings, data on staff absences due to COVID-19 related reasons are collected by the Department and published monthly, and are available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/monthly-statistics-for-adult-social-care-england
However, whilst rates are collected and monitored both centrally and locally, there has been no specific recent assessment of the impact of COVID-19 infection rates among health and social care staff on the delivery of frontline health and social care services.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will publish a list of all media publishers that received funding from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC’s legal duty of confidentiality applies to information about specific Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) claims.
A Ministerial Direction allowed HMRC to publish information about employer furlough claims from December 2020.
The Ministerial Direction only allowed HMRC to have this data published for a length of 12 months, so HMRC can no longer publish information on employers who received funding from the CJRS from December 2020 to September 2021, when the scheme closed.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason covid-19 vaccines are only available through the NHS as of 31 January 2024.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Government is committed to protecting those most at risk from COVID-19 through vaccination, as guided by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Those eligible receive vaccination for free through the National Health Service. Whether and when a private market for COVID-19 vaccines emerges is a matter for private companies, and the Government has no formal role in this. However, the Government is supportive of the emergence of a private market for COVID-19 vaccines, to increase choice for consumers.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department takes to ensure no mRNA vaccines are (a) procured and (b) supplied in breach of a patent.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Government has signed contracts for the supply of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, under which suppliers are required to warrant that the receipt and use of their vaccines will not infringe on any intellectual property rights.