Wednesday 11th March 2020

(4 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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Yes, absolutely; this is really important. We have some supplies of these sorts of things, in the supply chains and, in some cases, within the shops themselves, and we are working with the shops to ensure availability of things that can be critical to people’s care. We are working on that with DEFRA, the NHS and within the Department, particularly in relation to pharmacies, to make sure we get the right kit to the people who need it.

Philip Hollobone Portrait Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
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I commend the Health Secretary on doing a difficult job in trying circumstances extremely well. Likewise, I commend all the staff at Kettering General Hospital, who are working their socks off to ensure that the hospital is fully prepared. The only easily understandable benchmark our constituents have to judge the scale of this thing is seasonal flu, so can he tell the House, on average each year, how many people catch seasonal flu and how many people die from it?

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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That is a great question to which I do not have the answer in my head, but it is a matter of hundreds of thousands in the first instance and thousands in the second.