Oral Answers to Questions

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) [V]]

Public Health England and the joint biosecurity centre are undergoing a deep dive in Bedford to understand why the infection rate in my constituency is so high. The pillar 2 commercial mass-testing cases are still not being included in the individual totals for England. How does the Prime Minister know that the people of Bedford and Kempston are safe to embrace his new lockdown-easing measures when he does not know how many people are infected with coronavirus?

[The Prime Minister]

As I think the Leader of the Opposition himself confirmed just now, we do have a pretty good estimate of what is happening in the country. Overall, we think the numbers have moved down from, say, one in 400 four weeks ago to maybe one in 1,700 today. The incidence continues to decline across the country. Where there are particular outbreaks and particular hotspots, such as in Bedford or elsewhere, we now have the resources of our test and trace operation and the joint biosecurity centre, which are getting better and better the whole time, to implement those local crackdowns and cluster-busting operations.