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 reduce covid-19 vaccine wastage; and what action is taken with unused vaccines.

No vaccines should be wasted. All vaccination centres should have a backup list of people in the cohorts currently being vaccinated, who can be called in case doses would be wasted. This is in line with the Enhanced Service Specification for the COVID-19 vaccination programme 2020/21.

We have put in place robust mitigations throughout the vaccination programme to reduce wastage, manage expiry dates, and avoid vaccine destruction, including, where there is data to support it, looking at the extension of expiry dates.

The United Kingdom is also one of the largest donors to COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX). We will donate at least 100 million surplus doses within the next year, with the first batch of five million already delivered last month.