Pandemic Preparedness Strategy: building our capabilities (25 March 2026)

Summary

How the UK intends to rebuild readiness for future pandemics through a whole-of-government approach that prioritises the needs of the most vulnerable.

Content

The UK’s readiness for future pandemics is being overhauled through the publication of a new Pandemic Preparedness Strategy, backed by around £1 billion of investment in health protection measures including enhancing our access to essential vaccines and therapeutics, improving our pandemic surveillance systems and expanding our ability to roll out testing to the whole population.

Published by the Department for Health and Social Care today, the strategy outlines concrete action already taken across government to embed lessons from Covid-19: 

• PPE stockpiles will continue to be replenished with a variety of products and sizes.
• Departmental pandemic response plans will be reviewed to ensure government services and critical national infrastructure can be maintained effectively in a pandemic. 
• An ‘All Pandemic Hazards Bill’ will be drafted to ensure the government has legislative options ready to review and introduce as necessary in response to a range of pathogens. This will sit alongside a suite of prepared options for community protection measures to support swift decision-making and prioritisation to keep people safe. 
• UKHSA will build a new set of services to manage large scale testing, contact tracing and other scaled public health response measures’.
• Chemicals and equipment stockpiles needed for testing will be built up further to protect against supply risks that could develop in the early stages of a pandemic. 
• Data requirements to support decision-making will be reviewed to ensure information needed in a pandemic response is available, transparent, and can be shared quickly between organisations and with the public.