Covid-19 Update

Feryal Clark Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The latter question is really a question tied to the certification work. We have not hitherto, as my hon. Friend well knows, said that the rules for people who are vaccinated should be different from those for people who are non-vaccinated, but we know that some other countries are proposing to say that that will be case for international travel, so we do need to have a way of showing or proving it. However, we have not yet come to any conclusions about how we should do that and whether we should do that domestically. That is a matter for the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

On measuring how effective a second dose is, we have tests in the field right now to follow a sample of people who have had both tests, having them tested regularly—weekly, typically—to check whether they test positive, and therefore testing the effectiveness of both of the vaccines in the field. So far, we have published the results of that after one jab. Very early results are coming through after two jabs, and in the next couple of weeks we will have some really rich data on that, I should hope, because we have now seen a significant number of second jabs—10 million as of midnight last night.

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab) [V]]

The vaccination roll-out for the majority of the country has been nothing short of amazing, and I would like to thank the local NHS providers in Enfield and across the country for their herculean efforts. Sadly, for some parts of the country, including many parts of my constituency of Enfield North, a postcode lottery appears to be emerging, whereby vaccination rates are stubbornly low and falling behind the rest of the country. What is being done to combat this, and what additional support will the Department be providing to areas with consistently low vaccine rates?

[Matt Hancock]

We have a huge amount of work on to tackle exactly the phenomenon that the hon. Lady describes. I thank people in Enfield who have been working on the vaccination programme, because they have done incredibly well, but there is much more to do. We have to ensure that we make the vaccine more accessible—that it is easy to access—and that people have reassurances if they are hesitant. The Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), is leading on these efforts, including with innovative approaches that we are currently trialling, such as allowing multigenerational households to be vaccinated at once, to see how we can drive up uptake in those groups in which we have not seen such high uptake. As I said, overall uptake among over-50s is 94%, which is far higher than my best possible hopes just a couple of months ago, but if we can reduce that final 6%, for every percentage point that comes off it, the safer we all get.