Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether new antivirals specially designed to tackle COVID-19 will be available from pharmacies in England.

On 20 October 2021 the Department announced that we have secured 730,000 patient courses of two COVID-19 oral antiviral treatments for patients in the United Kingdom. However, these are awaiting the appropriate authorisation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and are not yet available for patients to access.

The Antivirals Taskforce is working with NHS England and NHS Improvement, the UK Health Security Agency and the devolved administrations to deploy these antivirals should they receive appropriate authorisation. Further details will be announced in due course.