Covid-19: Response

Lord Ribeiro Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness makes a powerful point. The frustrating truth is that many in the groups and communities of which she speaks take the fewest number of tests. Getting through to these groups is extremely important, so they can seek the clinical help they need if they are suffering from Covid. We have worked extremely hard with our marketing department to ensure that hard-to-reach communities get the marketing messages that will be effective. The noble Baroness provides a really reasonable reminder and I will redouble my efforts to ensure that those marketing messages are focused on the right communities.

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, I appreciate that “test, trace and isolate” is in its embryonic phase and that we have yet to learn the lessons of the pilot on the Isle of Wight, but at the height of the pandemic Sir Paul Nurse and other academic researchers offered, in the spirit of Dunkirk, to assist the Government with their “little boats”. Sadly, this approach failed to find favour, with a central approach then being used. Will my noble friend assure me that, as we head to a national rollout of “test, trace and isolate”, the Government will remain open to offers of help from those in the security and medical fields?

In addition, the PHE report identifies worrying outcomes from BAMEs who contracted Covid-19, as others have said, but the analyses did not cover comorbidities such as hypertension, which is common in the Asian and African populations, diabetes or obesity, which was mentioned in 21% of Covid-19 death certificates. Can my noble friend say when these factors will be considered, in order to provide a clearer picture for BAMEs who are at risk of contracting Covid-19 now and when the next wave comes in the winter?

[Lord Bethell]

My noble friend makes an incredibly perceptive point on the BAME research. He is entirely right that this important aspect of our understanding in relating the ethnic, social and behavioural elements of the response to the disease is essential. The report has not covered all the ground yet: that work is being done at the moment, as I mentioned earlier. Frankly, only when all those elements are linked together will we get a full picture.

Regarding the “little boats”, we absolutely celebrate them. In order to get the industrial-level testing numbers up, it was correct to back big laboratories that could do the automation necessary to achieve that. I am a huge admirer of Sir Paul Nurse and have spoken to him often. The role of laboratories such as his is in connection with their local NHS trusts. Many local laboratories are doing extremely good work with local NHS trusts and we are putting measures in place to facilitate and encourage such connections.