Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the delivery of routine child vaccination programmes.

Public Health England (PHE) has published a study on the early impact of COVID-19 on routine childhood vaccinations in England, which suggests that there has not been a significant impact on the number of primary immunisation doses administered compared to the previous year. Whilst there is some indication of a decrease in the first dose of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccination, this appears to be recovering. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.19.2000848

School immunisation programmes were paused as a result of school closures and PHE and NHS England and NHS Improvement are now working with regional commissioners to restore school-age vaccination programmes as quickly as possible.