Vaccine Rollout

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

It is not a question of one place taking precedence over another. I take a moment to applaud and pay tribute to GPs in Sheffield, and to all those who have proceeded at pace and got through their allocation as quickly as they could. That is absolutely the right priority and the right approach, and it is how we are going to get through the population very quickly. However, some people will get through their list more quickly than others, and it would be a mistake then to start asking them to move down the list when there are still those with very high priority who need to be vaccinated. Although I understand that it may be frustrating for a GP to stand idle, those are the practicalities of what we are doing. The mass vaccination centres are essential to deal with the very large numbers of people that we plan to vaccinate over the next few months. That is why the Sheffield vaccination centre is such good news.

[Baroness Hayman (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support the Government’s utilitarian public health approach to the spacing of vaccine doses, but does the Minister accept that the argument is dependent on an understanding of the full implications of different dosage regimes, and that a lack of specific data on this particular point in relation to the Pfizer vaccine is fuelling concerns? Will the Government now undertake research on this specific point as part of a vaccine rollout programme, to underpin robust and well-supported policy implementation, both here and in many other countries that could benefit from this data?