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 the potential effect of introducing a documented immunity and vaccination status for covid-19 via a health passport on (a) the operation of the Government's air-bridge system and (b) the UK's economic resilience and efficiency as it recovers from the covid-19 outbreak.

We first need to improve our understanding of the science around immunity in order to fully understand the potential of certification to facilitate a return to the ‘new normal’ – including to enable increased travel without the need to quarantine and increased economic activity.

In order to gain answers to critical questions, such as those relating to immunity to COVID-19 following infection with the virus, the United Kingdom Government is conducting some of the biggest seroprevalence surveys in the world. This includes using lab-based tests to monitor the number of people that are presenting an antibody response and how this response changes over time. The UK Government is also closely monitoring the results from clinical trials of candidate COVID-19 vaccines to determine their efficacy and the immune response they generate.