Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Kamall on 21 March (HL6991), what body was responsible for the decision that antiviral treatments for COVID-19 can only be prescribed by a clinician within a COVID Medicine Delivery Unit and are not available for general practice prescribing and purchase directly from pharmacies; when this decision was taken, and why.

The decision was made by NHS England and NHS Improvement prior to December 2021, when the first COVID Medicine Delivery Units were launched. Any decisions on the longer-term deployment of COVID-19 treatments beyond the highest risk groups will be subject to the outcomes of the PANORAMIC study on the effectiveness of antivirals in the United Kingdom population.