Covid-19 Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I have to say to the hon. Lady that I do not agree with her. There are commercial reasons why we have cancelled the contract, but I can tell her that it was also clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing would not get approval by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency here in the UK, and obviously she is not recommending that we administer vaccines that do not get approval.[Official Report, 16 September 2021, Vol. 700, c. 10MC.] I do understand her point about Livingston and the factory there. That is very important to the UK Government and of course to the Scottish Government, and it is something we will be working on together to see what more we can do.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I have a clarification and a request. On the clarification, I welcome the boosters, but could the Secretary of State clarify whether people who have had the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer will be having the same vaccine or mixing vaccines? On the request, one of the slowest things when it comes to dealing with the Pfizer vaccination is the 15-minutes that people have to wait to see that they do not have a reaction. We should now have the data, so will he ask the NHS to look at whether this could be removed to relieve some of the pressure on those delivering the vaccines over the winter?

[Sajid Javid]

On the booster programme, everyone on that programme will be offered either the Pfizer vaccine or half a dose of the Moderna vaccine. In the vast majority of cases I think it will be the Pfizer vaccine. On the data that is now available on the 15-minute wait, we are analysing it to see whether we can make any difference to the way in which we administer vaccines.