Philip Dunne urges the Government to ensure rural areas like Shropshire receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to enable them to meet the targets for vaccinating those in hard to reach rural areas where the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is proving especially difficult.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) [V]
I wholeheartedly congratulate my hon. Friend and all those involved in delivering over 10 million vaccines to the most vulnerable in our communities right across the UK, including at the vaccination hub opened on Tuesday at Ludlow racecourse with support to the local NHS from Royal Air Force medics, volunteers from Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service and Shropshire Council, and many community volunteers. May I ask my hon. Friend to consider most carefully, for those areas where deployment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine proved especially difficult —for example, primary care networks covering remote rural areas, with small GP practices and a sparse population, and lacking suitable premises to host large numbers per day, such as in south-west Shropshire—whether deliveries of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine can be prioritised to ensure that the priority group targets are met?
Nadhim Zahawi (Minister for COVID Vaccine Deployment
My right hon. Friend will appreciate the importance of maximising the vaccine available to GPs by using both the Pfizer vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, but in recent weeks the volume of Oxford-AstraZeneca going to GP sites has been higher than that of Pfizer, allowing the flex to visit the housebound and care homes and to deploy at individual practices in rural areas, as he rightly points out. Any site that wishes to discuss its vaccine allocations should do so with its local system in the first instance, and thereafter with the NHS regional team, but I am very happy to look at any specific examples.