Pandemic Preparedness

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

We definitely look to work closely with our colleagues, and I have spoken to my Health Minister counterparts on this. One of the lessons from the pandemic was that you also need to have your own capability. The work we have done on the100-day mission, and the strategic relationship we have entered into with Moderna—which can develop vaccines in as little as four to six weeks to answer some of those unknowns—is very powerful.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, it is now two years since the UK Health Security Agency replaced Public Health England. As we await the Science and Technology Committee’s report on the threat caused by zoonotic diseases such as Covid, avian flu and Ebola, can the Minister update the House on the progress the agency is making in building resilience in these areas? It reported last year on global work on developing pandemic-fighting tools but not on the nitty-gritty needed to tackle underlying problems still hampering us, such as tackling widespread health inequalities, building systems for vaccine resistance and raising public awareness of the threats we all face.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. The UKHSA has been working and there are four main areas we want to be responding on. First, there is the vaccine, and the 100-day mission is all about making sure that we have the vaccines quickly. We have 100 million vaccines prepositioned for flu and 250 million for other diseases. Secondly, there is the manufacturing scale-up. We have a fund in place so that we have UK domestic production capability to produce vaccines quickly. Thirdly, there is the stock of PPE, and, fourthly, there is the diagnostic capability. That is how the UK Health Security Agency is making sure we have all the bases covered.