Covid-19 Update

Jacob Young Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Funnily enough, when I speak to my colleagues from across the world we find we often have many of the same challenges, including the need to get the testing capacity up, and the hon. Gentleman may not believe me, but occasionally they ask me what we have done to extend testing capacity quite as much as we have. I am very happy to explain that to both him and his constituents and to the rest of the House.

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that his statement today does not impact on the decision to keep Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton, and Darlington out of local lockdown restrictions, and does he also see that more testing surely means more positive tests, so should we now be looking at the numbers of people admitted to hospital instead of covid case numbers before considering further lockdown restrictions in local authority areas?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. First, as the chief medical officer has confirmed, this issue does not affect the decisions taken last week, but of course we look at all those decisions each week, and, as my hon. Friend knows, we take as localised an approach as possible, so that rather than bringing in measures for the whole of Teesside, we brought in measures for Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, where the local councils had called for them—whether or not they mentioned that afterwards. We should keep working together and making sure we look at the data—the hospitalisation figures of course, as well as the test positivity, and of course the number of cases. Hospitalisation data is important, but it follows with a lag, so we have to look at the early indicators as well.