Covid-19 Update

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. He is generous with his words. I also direct his warm words of gratitude to the vaccine’s taskforce, which has done so much work to ensure that we procure and secure the supplies of these vaccines, should they prove safe as well as efficacious. On Sir John Bell’s comments, that option of testing people regularly—not if they are a primary case and have the virus, but if they are a contact—would not be open to us had we not secured the huge capacity for lateral-flow testing that we now have in this country. I very much look to clinicians for advice. Sir John Bell is a highly respected clinician and expert in this area, and I am sure that everybody will want to look closely at that issue.

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

With three and a half weeks left of the current lockdown in England, what does the Secretary of State plan to change so that covid-19 does not get out of control again when restrictions are eased? He mentions the pilot project of population testing in Liverpool, using newly developed lateral-flow tests, but there are not yet published sensitivity or specificity data for those tests. What is the risk of false negative or false positive results? Has the UK National Screening Committee been involved to help assess the risks, benefits, and costs of such mass population testing?



I welcome the progress made on the Pfizer vaccine, but it will take time before it is widely available, and, as the Secretary of State said earlier, we do not yet know if it will reduce transmission, so it does not remove the need to control viral spread using current measures. While I also welcome the expansion of PCR testing, I am sure he recognises that what matters is not just the number of tests available but that testing is part of a test, trace, isolate and support system for it to be effective. Five months on, Serco is still struggling to reach even 60% of contacts, so will he copy the more successful approach of the devolved nations and fund local public health teams to lead contact tracing in their areas?

An effective test and trace system can identify those carrying the virus rather than isolating everyone in a lockdown, but it is isolation that actually breaks the chains of infection. Is the Secretary of State therefore concerned that so few people are isolating when they should? How can that be improved? People will not stay off work if that means they cannot feed their family, so how will he make access to the Government’s isolation payment easier?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course, we are working to ensure that, by us all working together and making sacrifices, we can come out of this lockdown and into the tiered approach we had in place beforehand. That is the goal, and the more that people follow the rules during the lockdown, the more effective it will be. We obviously monitor the data closely on that.

The hon. Lady asked about lateral flow tests and their sensitivity and specificity, which is an incredibly important question. The assessment of the tests we are using in Liverpool and now rolling out elsewhere was made at Porton Down. We then tested 5,000 lateral flow tests alongside 5,000 polymerase chain reaction tests of the same people in the field, and we have a high degree of confidence that they can find people who are infectious. In fact, the lateral flow tests have a lower false positivity issue than the PCR tests, so they are very effective for the right uses, including mass population testing.

The hon. Lady asked about isolation. Of course, isolation is important. I would mention that we have test and trace systems in place across the UK and it turns out that there are differences in how a successful contact is measured. In England, we are much stricter in requiring contact to be a confirmed contact with somebody rather than just sending them a message, which does count as contact in some of the devolved and local systems. It is really important that we measure the same thing, rather than trying to make divisions where divisions do not exist.

Finally, it is vital that people isolate when they test positive or when they are asked to by NHS Test and Trace. I gently say again that the 20% figure is not particularly robust, because it implies that 80% of people are not doing anything to isolate. That is not what the survey found. Nevertheless, we should all urge and require people to follow the rules. When someone tests positive, they must isolate, and contacts must isolate. That is part of our social duty.