Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Kamall on 15 March (HL6625), why antiviral treatments for COVID-19 can only be prescribed by a clinician within a COVID Medicine Delivery Unit and cannot be prescribed by private physicians.

The supply of COVID-19 oral antivirals is not yet commercially available, with the current United Kingdom stocks held by the Government. As there is no commercial supply of antivirals, private physicians are not able to prescribe antivirals to non-hospitalised patients.