Thursday 4th March 2021

(3 years ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Pidding Portrait Baroness Pidding (Con) [V]
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My Lords, with the potential need for a rolling programme of booster injections or vaccination against new variants, can my noble friend tell the House what infrastructure is being planned so that we can protect our entire population for as long as is necessary?

Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell (Con)
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I am grateful to my noble friend for looking forward. She is entirely right: the experience of this vaccination programme cannot stop when we have finished the initial rollout and we have to look to the future. As I said in my opening remarks, I am extremely hopeful that this can be an inflection point where we double-up on our commitment to rid the country of as much contagious disease as we possibly can. That will include booster shots, to which my noble friend alluded. It will also include a greater commitment to flu shots, and we very much hope that we can increase dramatically the take-up of flu shots at all ages, to stop not only illness itself but transmission.