Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of whether elderly people will potentially have an increased risk of contracting the South African variant of covid-19 due to delaying the second dose of the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine to 12 weeks.

Industry led studies are ongoing to understand the level of protection the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines will provide against variant strains of COVID-19. This will include immunological studies to understand the potential for protection from COVID-19 vaccines against variants and follow up of phase three trial participants in geographical areas where variants are circulating. Global surveillance systems, including systems within Public Health England, will be able to provide observational data on vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 variants. These will be reviewed by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation as they become available.