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 help ensure that people who are self-isolating during the covid-19 outbreak can access prescribed medication without leaving home.

Patients who are self-isolating are encouraged to see if their medicines can be collected from the pharmacy or dispensing practice and delivered by family, friends, a carer or a volunteer. The NHS Volunteer Responders programme offers help to anyone who needs to self-isolate for any reason. Patients can also make use of distance or online selling pharmacies.

Currently there is a medicine delivery service for clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) patients commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement from community pharmacies for the duration of the national lockdown. If no family, friends, carers or volunteers are available, then the pharmacy will organise for the medicines to be delivered to CEV patients through this service.