Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of (a) how many health care professionals will be needed to administer a covid-19 vaccine to the population of England and (b) how long that process would take.

The Government has asked the National Health Service to be ready to deploy any safe and effective vaccines when available. ?The NHS is preparing to recruit staff to be trained as COVID-19 vaccinators in support of the national effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. We are working with experienced NHS partners to prepare for when a vaccine becomes available to enable the NHS to vaccinate as many people as possible.

Amendments to the Human Medicine Regulations allow a wider range of trained personnel to administer COVID-19 or flu vaccines. Recruitment is focused on those who already have experience in handling vaccinations but may currently work outside of NHS settings, for example, independent nurses or allied health care professionals. There may also be use of existing schemes such as NHS Bring Back scheme to fill roles.