Covid-19: Vaccines and Further Variants

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The noble Lord is right: the current vaccines are very effective at protecting against serious disease, hospitalisation and death, but not so much against the transmissibility of the disease. UK scientists are in touch with scientists around the world, and we pool information. The noble Lord will be pleased to know that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are being trialled in the US, and tomorrow, trials start at St George’s in London as well.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, we know that Covid is capable of producing endless variants and that seems to be the problem at the moment. What are the Government doing to try to reduce the risk of these variants? Are they working with countries around the world to get some resolution to this?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

As noble Lords will be aware, the best way of reducing the number of variants is to vaccinate as many people in the world as possible. The UK has donated £548 million to COVAX to provide vaccines for people in lower- income countries. We successfully met the PM’s target to donate 30 million vaccines internationally by the end of 2021. We are on track to meet the 100 million target set by the Prime Minister at the G7 last June and have set out a plan to donate 70 million of these. More than 43 million doses have now been delivered, with approximately 38 million having been received by COVAX and 7 million having been delivered directly by the UK to countries in need. These donations have benefited more than 30 countries. I know noble Lords will say that there is more that we can do, and indeed there probably is, but they should rest assured that the Government are working very hard to increase their ability to export these vaccines.