Covid-19 Update

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady very much. I think it was Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, who put it best yesterday when he talked about the best thing that we can do for our NHS staff. She is absolutely right in what she says about the stress and the pressure that the NHS has been operating under in these past few weeks. The best thing that we can do is to keep this infection rate going down, to roll out the vaccination programme and, indeed, to make sure that all NHS staff are vaccinated. As she knows, they are in the JCVI 1 to 4 group and are our priority for 15 February.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

The roll-out of the vaccine has been a truly heroic effort by absolutely everybody involved, not least to remain on track to get the top four priority groups their first dose by the middle of February. Every vaccine brings hope, but there is also an incredible amount of anxiety in the country, not least among business owners unable to trade, and families juggling home learning with holding down jobs. I urge my right hon. Friend, as he looks at rightly lifting the restrictions, to be really clear with all our constituents precisely what “when the data permits” means, so that there can be absolute clarity on what needs to happen to lift each tier of restrictions.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will of course set all this out in the course of the next few weeks. What I can tell the House are some obvious things that the House can see for itself. We need to be sure that the vaccine roll-out continues to go at the pace, and with the success, that it currently is. We need to ensure that we are targeting all those groups, reducing the overall level of vulnerability in the population.

We need to ensure, clearly, that the vaccine is working—or the vaccines are working, because there are at least two now—in the sense that they are driving down the mortality rate in those elderly and vulnerable groups. We need to start to see that. There are promising signs from Israel. In this country, we have not yet seen the data that would help us to be absolutely confident of that point.

Then, of course, there are the pressures on the NHS and other important considerations—to say nothing of the very important economic considerations that my hon. Friend raises. I assure him that we will set out much more in the course of the next weeks to give reassurance and certainty, as far as we can, to all our constituents.