Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans her Department has to make this winter's Covid-19 vaccine available for purchase.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
There are no plans to make the COVID-19 vaccines the Government holds for National Health Service use available for purchase. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), a body of independent experts, advises the Government on who should be offered vaccination through the national programme for COVID-19. Vaccination for COVID-19 through the NHS is free for those eligible and there are no plans to introduce charges.
Current COVID-19 vaccines offer good protection against serious outcomes but only short-lived protection from mild symptomatic disease. The aim therefore is to offer vaccination to those the JCVI advises are at higher risk of hospitalisation and death. This risk is strongly linked to older age and some specified clinical conditions.
All vaccines that have been licensed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for use in the UK may be prescribed by physicians privately as well as through the NHS. Currently COVID-19 vaccines are not available privately but as is the case for many other vaccines, manufacturers and providers are able to set up a private market alongside the NHS offer when they consider this viable and appropriate. The Government is supportive of the emergence of a private market for COVID-19 vaccines. Supply of vaccines for such a market would be, as with all other vaccines, a matter for the private providers working with manufacturers to obtain through the open market.
Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he will respond to Question 107516 tabled on 18 January 2022 by the hon. Member for Llanelli on Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome in the NHS.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
I refer the hon. Member to the answer to Question 107516.
Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome in the NHS.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
Following the first reports of paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome (PIMS) cases in London in April 2020, the former Public Health England initiated enhanced prospective national surveillance of PIMS cases with symptom onset between 1 March and 15 June 2020. NHS England used a rapid consensus exercise to develop national clinical management guidance on the condition.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends that clinicians follow guidance from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which directs critically ill children to acute care facilities. Training for paediatricians on PIMS has been supported by webinars for clinician decision makers and regular updates to paediatric critical care networks. Children with PIMS are identified, including appropriate treatment pathways, supported by seven specialised disease centres co-ordinating treatment advice.
Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent discussions he has had with the Welsh Government about financial support for victims of contaminated blood.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Jane Ellison) wrote to Vaughan Gething on 13 July 2016 to inform him of the publication of the Government Response to the Consultation on Reform of Financial and Other Support for those infected and affected by NHS supplied blood, and offered to arrange a call to discuss this further.
Officials from the Department and the Welsh Government have been working together over the past few months on the issue of scheme reform, including a workshop in London in March to consider the themes emerging from the England consultation, and regular phone conferences.