Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what (a) number and (b) percentage of UK donated surplus vaccines that have been unusable to short expiration dates.

Decisions on donations are driven by the availability of vaccines from domestic supply. Avoiding expiry and wastage of vaccines is a core objective determining when and where we share or deploy doses. For doses that we donate to COVAX, the UK donates doses before production has finished. This means the doses are delivered straight from the production line, arriving at COVAX with the same shelf life as they would have if they were being delivered to the UK for domestic use. Vaccines delivered by COVAX are delivered in consultation with countries and distributed in line with the World Health Organisation's 'equitable allocation framework'. Over 90% of doses in Q4 2021 were delivered to COVAX with over 3 month's shelf life.

For all bilateral donations we have sought assurances that recipients have the capacity to roll-out the quantity of doses in line with the national vaccination programmes ahead of their expiry date. Of the doses donated bilaterally by the end of December, 85,530 (1.6 per cent) were destroyed having reached their expiry date. We continue to monitor the distribution of donated vaccines.