Covid-19: Road Map

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. That is absolutely right and we have been at the forefront of that. He may be interested to know that we have also established a new partnership with vaccine manufacturer CureVac, which means that we are ready to build on our world-leading genomics expertise to develop new vaccines quickly if new variants appear. We have already placed an initial order for 50 million CureVac doses, in addition to the portfolio of more than 400 million doses that we have already secured. We believe that this will help ensure the ability rapidly to develop and deploy vaccines against any new variant or similar new diseases in the future.

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP) [V]]

My Lords, getting children back into schools for face-to-face teaching is critical and should be happening as quickly as possible. Can the Leader of the House say whether there has been contact by the Chief Medical Officer of England with the chief medical officers of the other countries of the United Kingdom to share his advice on that issue?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I assure the noble Lord that the chief medical officers speak regularly on a whole range of subjects, including this one. I think the Chief Medical Officer for England mentioned this in the press conference yesterday. Certainly, there are ongoing discussions and the chief medical officers work extremely closely together on issues such as this.