Asked by: James Murray (Labour (Co-op) - Ealing North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on what date his Department first became aware that a case of the South African variant of covid-19 had been identified in London W7, as confirmed by his Department on 1 February 2021.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Public Health England discovered a cluster linked to this variant in early December. The Department was notified on 11 December.
Asked by: James Murray (Labour (Co-op) - Ealing North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish the number of people resident in each (a) parliamentary constituency and (b) local authority area that were tested under (i) Pillar 1, (ii) Pillar 2 In-person routes and (ii) Pillar 2 Delivery routes.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
All upper tier local authorities have access to record level (including sex, age, occupation and postcode) test and case data.
We also publish public dashboards at a national, regional and local authority level and the MSOA (Middle Layer Super Output Area) map, allows users to type in a postcode to see how many cases there are in small areas of around 7,000 people.
Asked by: James Murray (Labour (Co-op) - Ealing North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the proportion of people who receive a positive result to a PCR test under (a) Pillar 1 and (b) Pillar 2 of the Government’s covid-19 testing programme who are infectious with covid-19 at the time the tests are taken.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Data on the number of PCR tests conducted and positive and negative results by pillars 1 and 2 are available at the following link:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing
We have made no assessment of the proportion of people who test positive who may be infectious at the time they are tested.
Asked by: James Murray (Labour (Co-op) - Ealing North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he is putting in place to ensure that residential care homes do not experience a shortage of (a) covid-19 tests and (b) personal protective equipment in the event of a second wave of covid-19 infections.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Adult Social Care Winter Plan outlines the Government’s commitment to provide free personal protective equipment for COVID-19 needs for adult social care until March 2021. The plan also provides advice and guidance on our testing strategy for adult social care.
We are issuing more than 100,000 tests a day to care homes across the country. As part of the drive to towards the target of a 500,000-a-day testing United Kingdom capacity by the end of October, the Government has announced the addition of new Lighthouse laboratories in Newport and Charnwood to the national lab network, and work is ongoing on plans to expand the UK’s laboratory capacity even further over the coming months. The recent £500 million investment will increase testing capacity and rollout new cutting-edge testing technology to deliver rapid tests.