Covid-19 Update

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I will take those questions in reverse order. I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), for his always diligent and thoughtful questions. As he will know, we gave the NHS in England an historic settlement in 2018 that will see its budget rise by £33.9 billion by 2023-24. We have provided over £27 billion to support the NHS in England since the start of the pandemic, including £9.7 billion so far for 2021-22. We will continue to make sure the NHS has everything it needs to continue supporting its staff and providing excellent care to the public, throughout the pandemic and beyond.

My right hon. Friend specifically asked about social care, and I know the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister are committed to making sure we deliver on our social care promise by the end of this year.

Public compliance is incredibly important, and I thank each and every person who has come forward and got themselves protected. Over the past few days, we have seen an almost doubling of the number of people going on to the NHS website to book appointments. There has almost been a doubling of appointments, too, which is incredible, considering where we are at the moment—we are almost touching 90% of all adults. These are the hard yards, and people are still coming forward. There are no easy decisions on this, as I said in answer to the shadow Health Secretary. We know that our most effective tool is the vaccination, but the second most effective is self-isolation. We are attempting to transition this virus from pandemic to endemic status. If we allow all these things to happen too rapidly and people then decide not to self-isolate, we run the risk of infection rates running away with us and challenging the strategy of our being the first major economy to transition. So we are working with business, and we are working flat out with the frontline critical infrastructure and key workers to get that guidance out. I am sure that colleagues in this House will be the first to receive it—I will make sure of that, even during recess.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP) [V]]

I wish you, colleagues and all the House staff a safe and happy summer recess, Mr Speaker. Clearly, vaccination is critical to fighting this pandemic. We all need to encourage uptake among younger adults, but is the Minister in a position to guarantee sufficient supplies of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to vaccinate them before the end of September? Whether this is done legally, as in the case of care homes staff, or through excluding people from social activities, does he recognise that making vaccination mandatory can increase distrust among those who are hesitant and drive them to become outright vaccine refusers? Despite the talk about caution, covid cases in England were already surging when the Government ploughed ahead with lifting all legal restrictions on Monday. Although vaccination has reduced the hospitalisation rate to between 2% and 3%, the Secretary of State suggested that covid cases could soar to 100,000 a day, which would result in 2,000 to 3,000 admissions, which is similar to what happened in the first wave. Does the Minister really not recognise that that would put health services under enormous pressure and cause the patient backlog to grow further? Are the Government even considering the impact of uncontrolled virus spread on vulnerable people, the incidence of long covid or the risk of generating yet another variant, with even greater vaccine resistance than delta? Finally, what contingencies are being put in place in case during recess the Government need to reintroduce covid restrictions, as has happened in Israel and the Netherlands?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady makes a number of important points, especially the final one, where she reminded the House, as I did in my statement, that a number of countries have opened up and then had to reverse some of their decisions, which is why we are being very careful to ensure that this transition is successful and then that transitioning the virus from pandemic to endemic status is as successful as possible. She asked about children’s vaccination. She will know that the Scottish Health Minister, Humza Yousaf, has accepted, as the Welsh, Northern Irish and ourselves in England have done, the JCVI guidelines on vaccinating vulnerable children, children living with vulnerable adults and those approaching their 18th birthday. If the JCVI goes further, as it is reviewing more data on vaccinating all children, I assure her that we have available the supply of Pfizer and Moderna to undertake that, while we also continue to deliver on the double vaccinations of all adults by the end of September. She asked about the immunosuppressed and of course the guidelines have gone out on the precautionary measures that immunosuppressed people would take; similar to the rest of the country, they should be careful and wear masks in crowded indoor spaces—there is advice on ventilation as well. The JCVI has gone further in its interim advice for our booster campaign, where it has placed the immunosuppressed at the top of the priority list. That campaign will begin in early September—that is the operational target we are working to for beginning boosting and of course co-administering, wherever possible, the flu vaccination.