Covid-19: Vaccines and Further Variants

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[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.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, we have a virtual contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, despite the Minister’s comments at the beginning of this Question, Nature published a report on 18 March saying that while vaccines protect against the omicron subvariant, their effect really does not last long. Will the Government place an order for the recently approved Evusheld as a pre-exposure prophylaxis drug, which Ministers have promised the very vulnerable since July last year? What steps are the Government taking to protect the severely immunocompromised in the longer term, including in their decision on who will be eligible for free lateral flow tests?