Coronavirus

Laura Farris Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

No.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I would like to begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend on the successful roll-out of dexamethasone, but my question is about international comparison. We were one of the later countries to be hit by the virus. There are others who have begun the process of moving out of lockdown ahead of us. What countries does my right hon. Friend see as the paradigm for the United Kingdom, and what steps, if any, are we taking to share information with healthcare professionals to emulate best practice?

[Matt Hancock]

This is a great question, and we look all the time for countries around the world that we can learn from. It is true that, in terms of where we were on the epidemiological curve, we went into lockdown before many European countries—before Germany, Spain and Italy—with lower cases per million. But we still learned from them. For instance, one of the lessons from Germany is that a massive testing regime is incredibly important, and we now have a much bigger testing regime than Germany, which is terrific, and we have built that up. We also look to the far east, with its lessons from severe acute respiratory syndrome and middle east respiratory syndrome, which it learned more directly. It has the contact tracing which we are putting in place. We are constantly learning. Probably the single most important thing that we can do in this crisis is constantly look around the world for places where we can learn best practice, and then implement it here.