Covid-19 Update

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord is entirely right to raise this issue. There is the awful possibility that the mutant vaccine escape virus could get around the vaccine altogether. We need a plan B, which might be dependent on antivirals as an alternative way of managing the disease. That is what happened with HIV, as we discussed last week. The therapeutic taskforce is looking at antivirals and putting together a plan to upscale our investment in that area. I am aware of Synairgen and ACTIV-2, but he is entirely right that this should now be a greater priority. I will take the matter back for the department to look into further.

[Lord Scriven (LD) [V]]

My Lords, virologists tell us that, even with vaccines, we will be living with Covid for years to come. The Statement says:

“Our mission must be to stop its spread altogether and break those chains of transmission.”


To ensure that this happens, what changes have been made during this lockdown to improve the outcomes of the £22 billion test, trace and isolate system, for when the restrictions are eased?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I pay immense tribute to the test and trace system, which, at 11 am, published remarkable performance figures, as the noble Lord probably knows; 92% of tests were turned around before the next day, and 86% of contacts were traced. This is an incredible performance. On his specific point, the creation of a variant-of-concern tracing group that is targeted at those rare appearances of VOCs in the community is the important development that we have put in place in reaction to the mutant variants. I pay tribute to Steve McManus, who is running that programme, for the impact that he has already made on the problem.