Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, in the context of data on the AstraZeneca vaccine's level of effectiveness against the omicron covid-19 variant, what proportion of the UK's doses to be redistributed to lower income countries in 2022 will be AstraZeneca; and if he will make a statement.

Decisions on vaccine donations will continue to depend on supply chain reliability, Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advice and the ability of countries to absorb and deploy vaccines. Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been crucial to the UK's domestic vaccination programme, accounting for over 40% of the vaccines used. This vaccine has a significant role as part of our continuing 'evergreen vaccination programme offer' and for members of the population coming forwards for boosting who are mRNA intolerant.

World Health Organisation have said that Omicron is probably already in most countries, and is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant. Whilst early estimates suggest vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection with Omicron is significantly lower than with Delta, the UK Health Security Agency have highlighted that, as we saw with previous variants, the effectiveness against severe disease with Omicron (protecting both individuals and health systems) is likely to be substantially higher than against symptomatic infection. This means that full vaccination with AstraZeneca is likely to continue to reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death from Omicron.