Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment Public Health England has made of implications for its policies of the literature review entitled Vitamin C: An Adjunctive Therapy for Respiratory Infection, Sepsis and Covid-19, published on 7 December 2020.

Public Health England has not formally assessed this review.

The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) considered nutrition and immune function in relation to COVID-19 at its meeting in June 2020. The SACN agreed that their scoping exercise indicates a lack of robust evidence at this current time to suggest that specific nutrients such as vitamin C can reduce the risk or severity of COVID-19. This scoping exercise may be updated, or a more formal assessment undertaken, if robust evidence becomes available. The SACN noted that there was currently no new evidence that would change current dietary advice in relation to immune function.