Baroness Andrews
Main Page: Baroness Andrews (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Andrews's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, I take the Minister back to airports. I have three questions. First, what is the science telling us about the likely impact—I know that this is a difficult question—of people coming off planes from highly affected countries? Have we done any research on that? Secondly, the Minister said that it is very difficult to test when people come off aircraft because the disease may be inhabiting them but not presenting. Other countries, however, are testing at five-day and even 10-day intervals: have we considered that? Thirdly, if our only strategy is quarantining, are we collecting data on how people are conforming? Are they staying in isolation? How do we know that? Can the science and the data be made available to us? If there is an unknown or even a known loophole, how do we fill that if quarantining is our only strategy?
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Baroness asks three extremely perceptive questions. With regard to the science of testing at airports, a huge amount of work is being done on this, and I pay tribute to the work of the scientists at SAGE, who have, I think, published several papers on this matter.
The number that sticks in my mind is SAGE’s estimate that of those infected who pass through an airport only 7% would be captured by what is called day zero testing—a tiny proportion. That uncomfortable and inconvenient statistic holds us back from doing what we would love to do—it just does not work. We are looking at seven-day testing, eight-day testing and 10-day testing. This is a lot about risk management: there is a risk curve. I would be happy to share a copy of the SAGE report, which is public, that shows that curve.
The noble Baroness is right to raise quarantine implementation: it is a cause of concern. Quarantine is critical to the effective implementation of our epidemic management. It is a trust-based system. Anyone who has read the papers will know that that trust-based system is under pressure. We are keeping it under review and will be looking at whether it needs to be updated.