Covid-19: Variant B.1.617.2

Debate between Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Bethell

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will publish data on the spread of the Covid-19 variant B.1.617.2, first identified in India, in schools in this country.

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

My Lords, I pay tribute to the contribution of teachers, pupils and parents in the battle against infections in schools. By the application of hygienic measures, distancing and asymptomatic testing, the spread of the virus has to date been limited. We are very vigilant—we are looking at recent upticks in infection, we react swiftly to outbreaks and we have published variant data twice a week. But we continue to work on ways of having more detailed, setting-specific analysis.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the DfE has just published the latest school attendance figures, which showed that the number of pupils in schools in England who had been shown to have Covid-19 had soared by some 33% in the space of a week. Those are national figures, so the increase would have been even greater in the eight hotspot areas. That surely shows the need for the Government to publish the latest data on a local government area basis to ensure that schools have the proper mitigation measures in place for their locality. The second wave of Covid caused immense disruption to children’s education. To ensure there is no repeat of that, will the Government enable secondary schools to carry out lateral flow tests on all pupils in the week following half-term in the hotspot areas?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, there is an enormous amount of data published. I draw the noble Lord’s attention to table 6 in the table test conducted on 28 May 2020, which has an enormous amount of weekly collection data for schools. In that week, 1,967,904 LFTs were taken by schools, and they yielded 1,806 positive results. Those were all examples of where we have cut the chains of transmission. Tests are delivered through a variety of channels, including the community testing channel. Reports on infections in schools are analysed by the tracing programme, and they are then taken through to PHE and JCB. We are looking at ways in which we can aggregate all that schools data into more specific tables. But until we do that, there is already a very large amount of data.