Pandemic Preparedness Debate
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Lord Turnberg
Main Page: Lord Turnberg (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Turnberg's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Noble Lords
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, some years ago, when I was chairman of the Public Health Laboratory Service, we had 31 public health laboratories dotted around the country. Their role was to track and trace the sources of infections. We lost those in a review of the Public Health Laboratory Service, and I resigned as a result of that. What a loss that has been. What efforts are being made now to replace those laboratories which can do the track and trace that we desperately need?
Lord Markham (Con)
As the noble Lord mentions, one of the key pillars is having diagnostic capability. The noble Lord will be aware that, for the sequencing of all the different Covid strands, it was the UK that they were sent to because our diagnostic and sequencing ability is second to none. I am assured that that capability still exists and, with that, our ability to scale up diagnostic testing very quickly.