Covid-19 Update

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We keep all these decisions for each country under constant review. The challenge of the genomic data is that some countries have excellent coverage of genomic sequencing and others do not. Actually, that is not particularly correlated with their income. For instance, South Africa, a middle-income country, has excellent genomic sequencing. We take the decisions very rapidly when we need to. We keep all this under constant review and I am glad that she welcomes the decision to put India on the red list today.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

May I add my congratulations to all those who have been involved in the fantastic vaccine roll-out that the Secretary of State set out in his statement? It is obviously breaking the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths, as we are seeing dramatically from the figures. Many members of the public and businesses, having looked at the road map, which he also mentioned, will have seen that as of 21 June, the Government and the public are expecting the country to be broadly back to normal, but, of course, there is the small print about the reviews on social distancing. Will he confirm to the House and the public that as of 21 June, he expects us to be broadly back to normal, without social distancing? If that is not the case, will he set out what the evidence base will be for that decision?

[Matt Hancock]

Any decisions like that would be based on the evidence, and we have far more evidence now than we did when making these decisions previously. I fully expect that there will be some areas of life, without the need for laws in this place, where people will behave more cautiously than previously. The wearing of masks is one—before this pandemic, wearing a mask in public in this country was extremely unusual. I imagine that some people will wear masks, and choose to wear masks, for some time to come. Our goal is to manage this virus and the pandemic that it has caused more like flu—in fact, like flu. Flu comes through each year. We do take action to deal with flu—we take action on nosocomial infection in hospitals and through the flu vaccine programme—but we do not stop normal life as we know it. That is the overall attitude and approach. My right hon. Friend mentions that four reviews were set out as part of the road map and they will, of course, have to conclude. But that is my hope because, as he knows, I very firmly believe that this vaccine is breaking that link. We can see it in the data every single day and in the way that the country is responding. It is uplifting.