In 2010, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation found that offering a universal varicella vaccination programme against chickenpox would not be cost effective and may increase the risk of severe disease and complications in adulthood, both from chickenpox and shingles.

The varicella/zoster subcommittee has kept this under review. In February 2019 the subcommittee commissioned modellers to re-run the economic modelling with new quality-adjusted life year data and discount rates. This work was paused during the pandemic and will recommence in due course.

The decision to offer a chickenpox vaccine to all children in the United Kingdom is under ongoing review by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

The JCVI has previously advised that offering a universal varicella or chickenpox vaccination programme would not be cost-effective and is highly likely to increase the risk of severe disease and complications in adulthood, both from chickenpox and shingles.

The Department does hold the data in the format required. Over 30 billion items of personal protective equipment (PPE) have been ordered by the Department from over 175 United Kingdom-based manufacturers and international partners to provide a continuous supply in the coming months. We have a robust process which ensures that orders are of high quality standard, meet commercial due diligence and checked for risk and fraud. All contracts are monitored by the Department for the delivery and safe receipt of the PPE and any compliance issues are followed up.

NHS England and NHS Improvement issued a letter and Standard Operating Procedure to the profession on 17 June setting out that practices are able to resume National Health Service eye care services where practices have the relevant infection protection control and personal protective equipment in place. Decisions on when to reopen for private sight tests and services are a matter for the individual optician. Our understanding is that most high street opticians have now reopened for private and NHS care.

NHS England and NHS Improvement’s published guidance can be found at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/primary-care/optical-setting/

Deloitte is providing operational support for the procurement process of personal protective equipment (PPE) from existing and new manufacturers who can assist in scaling-up regulatory-approved PPE resources within the United Kingdom. As an existing professional services provider to the public sector, Deloitte’s expertise is being used to supplement in-house resource to deliver significant programmes of work, which currently includes the national response to COVID-19.

Sodexo are one of a number of facility management companies who are supporting the establishment and running of testing centres across the UK. Officials have worked with various industry providers to understand who has the footprint and ability to establish and run services in all geographical areas within short timescales.

Guidance on how contracting authorities should respond to COVID-19 was published on 18 March. Authorities are allowed to procure goods, services and works with extreme urgency in exceptional circumstances using regulation 32(2)(c) under the Public Contract Regulations 2015. We have also made it clear that authorities must continue to achieve value for money for taxpayers, use good commercial judgement and publish the details of any awards made, in line with regulations and Government transparency guidelines.

The Vaccines Taskforce is working with the BioIndustry Association Taskforce to review and increase where possible, existing domestic capability to manufacture vaccines in response to COVID-19. This includes a review of the acceleration and increasing capacity of the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, so that it becomes operational earlier than planned and can manufacture population level doses.

For COVID-19, the type of vaccine manufacturing capacity needed will be determined by the nature of the vaccine that is developed and the technology used to produce the vaccines. The scale of facility needed will depend on how potent the vaccines are, and the productivity of the processes used to produce them. This work is proceeding at pace across different vaccine types, while those vaccines are still under development.