Covid-19 Update

Lord Trees Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I absolutely forgive my noble friend because that is an extremely sensible question. I take it on board completely. The endgame is to end a contagious disease that has exponential growth. As she knows, R is currently between 1.2 and 1.4. If it goes unchecked, this disease will spread pretty much through the whole population. The vaccine is excellent at keeping people out of hospital, but not everyone. It is excellent at preventing deaths, but not for everyone. It is good at stopping the disease, but only half of the disease. We must get enough vaccine out there so that the disease will not run through the entire population and lead to the deaths of thousands, tens of thousands, or more. That is the endgame of this project.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the Covid cases reported daily in the media are not clinical cases? They are not sick people but positive results of the PCR test. Given that the PCR test is incredibly sensitive and can detect tiny numbers of virus particles, what proportion of positive tests is likely to develop clinical disease?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the PCR test is very sensitive. Most people who take the test are presenting a symptom, so a very high proportion of those positives are people who have the disease when they take it. Of course, there are many who have the disease and do not take a test at all, so there is more disease in the population than accounted for in the positive tests. There is a very small proportion of people who might have shreds of the virus from a previous infection who then test positive, but it is thought that that proportion is very small.