Coronavirus

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. The whole House should pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work as a first responder during this crisis. He has first-hand experience of the matters of which he speaks. The particular issue that he has raised is not one that has been previously drawn to my attention, but we are doing everything that we can to hire nurses and we are seeing the results of that: over 12,000 more nurses than this time last year in the NHS. We are well on our way to the 50,000 more nurses over this Parliament, on which everybody on the Conservative Benches was elected. I will look into the particular issues he raises and try to solve the problem.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) [V]]

Last week’s “Panorama” had a public health expert from Germany saying that, if we only look for people with symptoms, we get not the whole iceberg, but just the tip of it. The Faroe Islands, which have the highest testing in the world per population—between a fifth and a third of the population—found, as far back as March, that 80% to 85% of covid-19 carriers were asymptomatic. What strategy does the Secretary of State have to find those people who are asymptomatic, because we either test and search out the whole iceberg or we keep using the blunt instrument of lockdowns?

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that around 70% to 80% of positive cases in surveys are of people who are asymptomatic. It is one of the most difficult things about this virus. Hence we have built one of the largest testing capabilities in the world. It is significantly bigger than all the other major countries, bar a small number. We are using that testing capability for asymptomatic testing as well as for symptomatic testing across the NHS and social care. We are supporting Scotland as much as we possibly can in its testing effort, too.