Emma Lewell-Buck
Main Page: Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)Department Debates - View all Emma Lewell-Buck's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Covid-19
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
I will write to my right hon. Friend with that detail. Suffice it to say that we now have 908 people with covid, as I said in my statement—the lowest number since lockdown.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
South Shields and North Tyneside are interconnected. Today, my community and businesses are incredibly anxious. We know that local lockdowns do not work and inevitably lead to national ones. We know that it is likely that there will be other variants of this virus, which may well be with us for ever. Lockdowns break our economy and society, cause mental distress, delay vital cancer treatments, lead to further unemployment and exacerbate inequalities. Can the Minister explain why the Government’s response—instead of fixing test, trace and isolate, for example—is always more restrictions and endless cycles of lockdown?
Nadhim Zahawi
I hope the hon. Lady agrees that the vaccination programme has given us a way out of non-pharmaceutical interventions, which were the only thing we had at our disposal to try to slow down the pandemic and the virus. As we transition from pandemic to endemic, we are planning for a booster shot in the autumn to protect the most vulnerable or all people in phase 1—that clinical decision has yet to be made. We are already making plans for next year to deal with covid, as we deal with seasonal flu, through annual vaccination programmes. By next year, this country will be able to manufacture 700 million doses of vaccine, not just for the UK but to help the rest of the world.