Covid-19
Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Shaun Bailey(3 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Nadhim Zahawi
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a passionate advocate for community pharmacies; he and I have discussed them in the past. I do not recognise his characterisation of the NHS team, who I absolutely know work every day with community pharmacies. I think that just over 500 community pharmacies and independent pharmacies are now part of the vaccine deployment. In phase 1, they have proved themselves to be excellent at reaching out and giving confidence to their communities and at getting people vaccinated; where primary care has decided not to carry on with phase 2, they have also stepped up to fill the gaps so that we keep going. I will absolutely look at the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency to see whether we can do more.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
The record vaccine roll-out has absolutely vindicated the decision of my constituents in Wednesbury, Oldbury and Tipton to believe that this country can succeed in standing on its own two feet. Vaccination is going to form a really big part of our lives. What work is my hon. Friend doing to ensure that, as we continue our vaccination roll-out, we have the localised infrastructure to ensure that our great progress is not hindered?
Nadhim Zahawi
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. If the virus were designed to test liberal democracies, because the only way we could combat it was to withdraw people’s freedoms with the dreaded non-pharmaceutical interventions, the vaccine has played to the real strengths of the four nations that make up the peoples of these isles. We have had that Dunkirk spirit of coming together as 1,000 flotillas: the 80,000 volunteer vaccinators, the doctors, the nurses, the pharmacists and, of course, our armed forces and local government colleagues, who have stepped up not only to identify communities that we need to protect, but to find sites.
We are already making plans for the booster jab to be ready by September. I remind the House that the clinical decision has not yet been made, but when it is—whether that is in September, in October, in November or early in the new year—we will be ready to go. We are also planning how it will dovetail with our flu vaccination programme and seeing how we can increase the uptake in flu vaccination, because the worst of all worlds would be to do well against covid and then be hit by a heavy flu season in the autumn.