Covid-19 Update

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I agree that it is indeed critical that everyone recognises the importance of our own personal actions in controlling covid, but we also need an efficient test, trace and isolate system, the first step of which is for people to get access to a test. With UK cases having trebled over the past fortnight, demand has increased and there have been many reports of people being sent hundreds of miles to get a covid test. One of the most extreme examples was somebody in Plymouth being sent by the booking system to the test centre in Inverness.

I understand that demand varies depending on local incidence, but surely it is dangerous to have possibly infectious people travelling long distances when they are unwell and may need to use motor-services facilities on the way. Would it not make more sense to allow covid tests still to be taken locally, and just shift the samples around the UK to the labs with the greatest capacity?

While the commercial pillar 2 testing has increased dramatically since April, the 

laboratories are very centralised, whereas NHS hospital laboratories are far more numerous and based within easier reach of communities. To meet the high demand that is likely this coming winter, will the Secretary of State consider additional funding to the NHS to allow the expansion of its PCR facilities and to maximise pillar 1 testing capacity?

[Matt Hancock]

The answer to that last question is, absolutely, yes. The hon. Lady is quite right that expanding the NHS capacity, as well as expanding the so-called pillar 2 capacity, is right. The SNP spokesperson and I sometimes have robust exchanges but on this, she is completely right. It is an “and/and together” strategy of having the pillar 2 mass testing across the board and the expansion of NHS capacity. I am working as closely as I possibly can with Jeane Freeman, my opposite number in the SNP Government in Edinburgh, to deliver that as effectively as possible right across the UK.