Covid-19 Update

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am absolutely determined to address the questions and the impact of covid on those who live with disabilities. The hon. Lady’s point is important and this will form part of our work on inequalities and the response to covid. The Minister for Equalities is taking that work forward.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend share what factors lie behind the infection rate being so high in Leicester? Will those factors be shared with local resilience forums, such as mine in the south-east, so that they can also prepare? Secondly, he said that children in Leicester were particularly vulnerable. That is not the norm for covid, so is this a separate strand of covid or can he say why the youngsters in Leicester are so vulnerable?

[Matt Hancock]

To be clear, children have a very low risk of suffering from covid, but we have been looking at the proportion of children who have tested positive and therefore may be transmitting the disease. Thankfully, the disease poses a very low risk to any individual child in terms of their becoming ill or worse, but the challenge is that it still transmits through children. That is why we have taken the decision that we have on schools in Leicester. Of course, there are many reasons and potential reasons why the outbreak has occurred in the way it has in Leicester. We are still getting to the bottom of those, but I undertake to ensure that directors of public health in other areas understand those reasons. For instance, we are doing work specifically on food processing factories, which seem to have a higher rate of infection around the world, including in America, Germany and also in north Wales. Of course, there is a challenge in the community to ensure that we understand properly the origins and the spread of the outbreak in Leicester and then look at similar cities where the case rate is thankfully much lower, but ensure that we learn the lessons for similar cities, precisely as the shadow Secretary of State said.