Covid-19

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness asks two very pertinent questions which slightly answer themselves, in a way—but let me try to update the House on our plans in that area. She is right that we have powers on local lockdowns, but that is not the focus of our thinking at the moment. Local lockdowns are an important tool, but not one that we think is a priority right at this moment. We are focused on the vaccines. It is beyond doubt that this Indian 2 variant particularly hits those who are not properly vaccinated—and by “properly” I mean “have had two doses and two weeks”. Those who have forgone either their first or second dose are particularly vulnerable, and you have only to look at the infection data and, particularly, the hospitalisation data to understand that.

That is why we have rolled out surge vaccination in those areas. What that means is a huge amount of communication, a huge amount of engagement with the communities and the presence of various mobile vaccination units sent directly into the heart of the communities to provide different channels and mediums by which people can step up for their vaccine. The response has been extremely strong and I am touched, as I have said, by the videos of people in some of those communities, particularly in Bolton, where people have queued up for their vaccines. I pay tribute to the DPHs and local authorities that have facilitated that programme.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

I echo the gratitude of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, to the Minister for his stamina this morning. Can he say whether each of the 121 local authority areas reporting cases of Covid variant B16172 are being given specific extra resources for mass surge test, trace and isolate and arrangements for surge vaccination on top of their planned allocation for this financial year? Can he say when the pilots for extra help with self-isolation will conclude? When would any likely rollout of a proper approach to supporting those who have to self-isolate, including paying their wages, start?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness alludes to a dilemma that we face. It is not possible to organise surge testing and have pinpoint outbreak management in 120 different areas. That is just too many and our resources do not stretch to that. Many of the outbreaks are substantial clusters. Sorry—let me phrase that better. There is a small number of very substantial clusters in the towns and cities of which noble Lords will be aware. That is where we are focusing the surge testing and surge vaccination. In the other areas, we are working with DPHs to ensure that they know the best way to target the particular behaviours of the India 2. That means that it has very high transmissibility, which requires an extremely quick reaction to school and workplace outbreaks, and within specific communities. That kind of briefing and guidance has been channelled through the Chief Medical Officer’s department and the kinds of infrastructure that I described in my answers to previous questions. The response has been extremely strong and I hope we are making some impact on the spread of the India virus, but we remain extremely vigilant.