Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment the Government has made of the potential effect of the (a) development and (b) authorisation of a covid-19 vaccine that doesn't prevent (i) transmission and (ii) fatalities on public confidence in (A) the Government response to covid-19, (B) public health programmes and (C) economic growth.

A COVID-19 vaccine will only be deployed once it has been proven to be safe and effective through robust clinical trials and approved for use by the appropriate licensing authority. There are numerous potential vaccine candidates in development, which the United Kingdom will have access to. Once a vaccine is ready, it will be deployed to those most at risk, and then rolled out more widely. Regular testing of virus samples will be undertaken to assess any changes in the virus that may impact on vaccine effectiveness. Safe and effective vaccines rolled out to the population will form part of our overall recovery effort from the impact of this global pandemic.