Coronavirus

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall

Monday 3rd February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

There were a few questions there. With regard to transmission, this is an evolving picture, so the best thing would be for me to send the most up-to-date information to the noble Baroness and put a copy in the Library, as I am sure it will be of interest to the whole House.

On ECMO beds, since April 2013, NHS England has commissioned a total of 15 adult respiratory ECMO beds from five providers in England. There is further provision in Scotland. But in periods of high demand, the capacity can be increased. For example, in the winter of 2018-19, when there was a significant risk associated with flu, the capacity was increased to over 30 beds and similar arrangements are in place for paediatric services. In addition, there are eight commissioned high-consequence infectious disease beds and around 500 infectious disease beds, and at the moment NHS England is confident that it has enough capacity, which I hope is reassuring for the noble Baroness. Obviously, we are keeping that under constant review as the situation evolves.

On the question about surfaces, that is one of the specific reasons why advice has been given regarding personal hygiene—washing hands and using tissues when sneezing—to avoid any forms of transmission that may create the kind of risks referred to by the noble Baroness.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, when the Minister repeated the Statement, she referred to the precautionary measures that people are being invited to remember when trying not to pass on infection. If I recall, the Statement said something to the effect of “as you would normally do with flu”. But does the Minister agree that that is not what people normally do with flu? People often do not take the symptoms seriously and transmit it before they have even decided to give into it themselves. I have one germane example in this context. A member of my family contracted flu a couple of months ago which became pneumonia, although fortunately not a serious case. He was advised to go to his GP and the GP referred him to A&E where he waited a long time with a lot of other people in what was clearly a highly infectious state.

Given the stringency of the measures taken to contain coronavirus, can the Minister say what wider public health lessons we might take from this in giving consistent messages to prevent people imagining that flu is a minor illness and it does not matter if you continue going to work or pass it on to other people? It does matter, and the mortality rate among vulnerable groups with flu can be quite high, as the Minister will know.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness has rightly raised this issue with me before. She is quite right that flu can and should be managed much more effectively in the community and by individuals. I think we have had an effective flu campaign this year. The flu vaccine has been offered to 25 million people. We have also extended the flu programme this year to children in year 6 to improve herd immunity and drive up its impact. We are seeing the number of those with flu declining, so we are starting to see some improvement. However, I completely recognise the noble Baroness’s point about public health lessons and improving public education on the management of infectious conditions, which we live with every winter, not just when we have an infectious situation such as this. I thank the noble Baroness for an important question.

National Health Service Infrastructure

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

We have been looking at providing additional funding and support to councils to meet the rising demands and to continue to stabilise the social care system. We announced access to an additional £1.5 billion of funding for adults and social care, and we will be considering this further in the spending review.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that there was a spike in the incidence of flu just before Christmas; I do not know whether it has diminished, but it certainly was quite high. As a consequence, a number of people who perhaps would have much preferred not to go to hospital were forced to do so. She might like to know that, in one London hospital to which one of my family was obliged to go, the queue for A&E was out into the street. Many of those people were ill and should not have been outside in the cold. The reason for it was partly to do with availability of staff but more to do with the availability of chairs. Does she understand that hospitals need capacity beyond what their expectation might be of how many people will turn up, precisely to cope when there is a spike of this kind?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness is right that there has been a significant increase in demand over recent years. That is partly why we have secured the significant funding increase from the Treasury of £33.9 billion, which we will be enshrining in law for the first time to give certainty to hospitals. It is why we are increasing the capital investment, which will address some of the challenges that she has raised, and it is also why we have run a vigorous flu vaccination programme to prevent people from getting into that problem in the first place. We recognise that we need to reduce the demand from those going into A&E unnecessarily and to support those very hard-working staff who were in those situations over Christmas and the new year. We thank them for their hard work over that period.