Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that dental surgeries receive adequate levels of personal protective equipment.

Since 25 February 2020 the Department has distributed over 3.8 billion personal protective equipment (PPE) items for use by health and social care services in England, which includes over 30 million items authorised for release to designated wholesalers for onward sale to dentists.

We have over 32 billion PPE items on order and are building a stockpile equivalent to approximately four months PPE usage at COVID-19 usage levels which will be in place by November.

Dentists that have a National Health Service contract are now be able to get PPE to meet all of their COVID-19 demand free of charge via the PPE portal. Where this is not possible, we have provided alternative routes for urgent dental care centres to access specific items.