Covid-19 Update

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

As I have said, we will absolutely vaccinate according to clinical need. Once we are through those clinical need cohorts, there is a very important call on the next set of prioritisations, which we have not yet set out, and both teachers and unpaid carers have a good case to make.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

As the Health Secretary has said, today is clearly a day of mixed emotions. I hugely welcome the news about the Oxford vaccine and pay tribute to Cobra Biologics in my constituency, which has been manufacturing it and has been involved since the outset. However, moving Staffordshire to tier 4 is very tough on the people of Newcastle. We have worked hard to get our rate down and it is currently stable and, indeed, falling slightly. I understand the risk of the new variant, but will he confirm that there is a way out of tier 4 and that he will take into account vaccination rates and the effect on the NHS, and not look purely at case numbers once we have the vaccination programme rolled out?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I absolutely will. We already look at the impact on the NHS, of course, but that will become more important as more and more people are vaccinated and, we hope, the correlation between cases and future hospitalisations, which is currently stable, starts to go down and there are fewer hospitalisations for every individual case. Obviously we should take that into account.