Jeremy Hunt
Main Page: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - Godalming and Ash)Department Debates - View all Jeremy Hunt's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)
I thank both Front Benchers for the highly responsible way in which they are approaching this crisis, which shows Parliament at its best. I also thank the Health Secretary for his role in getting those very generous words for the NHS into the Chancellor’s speech this afternoon; they have been widely welcomed across the NHS and were much needed.
The chief medical officer says that we would have to be “pretty optimistic” to think we could contain the virus in this country. The deputy chief medical officer says that she thinks we may hit the peak in the next fortnight. We now have more reported cases in this country than there were in Wuhan when it went into lockdown. We know that the Secretary of State will rightly follow the science, but could I ask him to give his judgment to the House as to whether he thinks we still can contain the virus in this country and, if not, whether he expects to move to the delay phase very soon so that families up and down the country can start to prepare their loved ones for any precautions they might want to take?
Matt Hancock
I want to make two comments in response to my right hon. Friend. First, I want slightly to correct the point about the deputy chief medical officer, who said that in the next couple of weeks we may see the numbers starting to rise fast to their peak. We do not expect numbers to peak in the next fortnight. We expect them to continue to rise after that. The peak would be in a matter of a couple of months, rather than a couple of weeks. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Secondly, the World Health Organisation declaring this afternoon that the virus is globally now regarded as a pandemic indicates that the WHO thinks it will spread right across the world, and that will have a significant impact on the way in which countries around the world will now take forward their plans. Of course, the expectation that this may well happen was all within the plan that we set out. We will be discussing that at the Cobra meeting tomorrow.