Covid-19: Impact of No-deal Brexit on Vaccine Supplies Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Lord Bilimoria
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Covid-19: Impact of No-deal Brexit on Vaccine Supplies
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Bilimoria (CB) [V]
My Lords, we have the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine available, with more than 137,000 people inoculated in the first week, and we hope to have the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine available soon, approved by the MHRA. In due course, when there is widespread availability of the vaccines, will the Minister look at getting businesses to work with the Government and the NHS to have vaccinations take place at large workplaces, including factories, under proper supervision, thus preventing disruption at work and speeding up the rollout of the vaccinations and saving lives?
Lord Callanan (Con)
This is a matter, of course, for the Department of Health and Social Care, but we will indeed want to work with businesses, as we have done on the supply of vaccines. We pay tribute to the work of the Vaccine Taskforce, which has done a tremendous job. We have 357 million doses of vaccines from seven leading candidates, some of which are manufactured in the UK and some abroad. We have worked very closely with business and we want to continue to do so in the future.