To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish a list of the 46 products in 53 presentations for which his Department held a tender and procurement exercise for the Supply of Supportive Medicines for a UK Stockpile of Medicines for Covid-19 Preparedness, in August 2020; and what volumes of each of those 46 products was held in UK stockpiles on (a) 1 October 2019 and (b) 1 October 2020.
Answered on
14 October 2020
The Government continues to hold stockpiles of medicines to cope with a range of scenarios, and robust contingency planning continues to ensure that the country is prepared for a possible second peak of COVID-19 infections.
The Department has recently undertaken a tender exercise to source critical COVID-19 supportive medicines and a second tender exercise is currently live. Details of the tender exercises can be found at the following links:
https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:355937-2020:HTML:EN:HTML&tabId=1&tabLang=en#id4-VI
This is a new stockpile and we are currently in the process of awarding contracts and taking and arranging for the delivery of supplies of some of these medicines.
Other United Kingdom stockpiles hold medicines that will be included in the COVID-19 supportive medicines stockpile. Volumes of relevant medicines held in the Essential Medicines Buffer Stock (EMBS) for the requested dates are shown in the following table, by way of example. It is important to recognise that stockholdings of these medicines will change following completion of the tender exercises.
Presentation | EMBS presentation | EMBS volumes as at 01 October 2019 (singles) | EMBS volumes as at 01 October 2020 (singles) |
Adrenaline (base) 1mg/10ml (1 in 10,000) dilute solution for injection ampoules | Adrenaline 1:10000 100mcg/ml 1mL pfs injection | - | 154,651 |
Doxycycline 100mg capsules | doxycycline_100mg_Caps / Tabs8 | 10,510,440 | - |
Fentanyl 500micrograms/10ml solution for injection ampoules | fentanyl_50mcg/mL 10mL_injection5-10 | 818,914 | - |
Levomepromazine 25mg/1ml solution for injection ampoules | levomepromazine_25mg/mL 1mL_injection10 | 84,565 | - |
Magnesium Sulphate 20mmol/100ml bag | magnesium sulphate_50% 10mL_injection10 | 81,405 | 81,410 |
Meropenem 1g powder for solution for injection vials | meropenem_1g_injection10 | 508,540 | 112,270 |
Midazolam 10mg/2ml solution for injection ampoules | midazolam_5mg/mL 2mL_injection10 | 504,831 | - |
Morphine sulfate 10mg/1ml solution for injection ampoules | morphine_10mg/mL 1mL_injection10 | 1,115,656 | - |
Morphine sulfate 10mg/5ml oral solution 300ml | Morphine 10mg/5ml liquid 300ml | 94,805 | 94,812 |
Paracetamol 500mg tablets | paracetamol_500mg_Caps / Tabs32-100 | 706,072,175 | 296,550,300 |
Suxamethonium chloride 100mg/2ml solution for injection ampoules | Suxamethonium 50mg/mL 2mL injection | 40,595 | 40,600 |
Tinzaparin sodium 4,500units/0.45ml solution for injection pre-filled syringes | tinzaparin_4500unit_injection10 | 595,739 | 595,739 |