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 create the necessary infrastructure and staff capacity to allow for annual covid-19 vaccination of the general population, in the event that annual vaccination is required.

At present, it is not known whether recurrent booster doses will be required annually. The current advice on COVID-19 booster vaccinations applies to this highly active phase of the pandemic so that individual protection is maximised in response to the Omicron variant. We continue to monitor the situation informed by the latest scientific evidence and we will plan for all eventualities, such as annual vaccinations.