Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of (a) fill-finish capacity and (b) the effect of that capacity on plans to upscale vaccine rollout.

We have been monitoring the requirements across the supply chain from supplier through to patients for some time. All vaccine candidates’ supply and onward deployment have clear supply chain plans across the value chain, including materials, manufacturing, transportation, storage, and distribution. Three of the United Kingdom's seven COVID-19 vaccines are being manufactured in the UK. The Government has worked closely with the manufacturers to ensure that we have sufficient capacity secured.

The Government has also invested over £300 million in securing and scaling up the UK’s manufacturing capabilities to be able to respond to this pandemic, which includes investments in Wockhardt where the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is filled and finished. As of 25 January 2021, 6,573,570million people in the UK had been vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine. We continue to plan to hit our target of vaccinating all four priority groups by 15 February.