Public Health

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Ben Spencer

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

I have given way a lot, and lots of other hon. Members are waiting to speak.

As for the Leader of the House’s nonsensical claim that people cannot catch covid from their friends, I have to say that words fail me—and as Members can well believe, that is not a common occurrence. It is clear that the most common spread is within households. If the Leader of the House thinks that husbands, wives and children are not friendly with one another, I really worry about his home circumstances.

It is early days, but we should be following a precautionary approach. As Dr Ryan of the World Health Organisation has always said: go early and go hard. In the last three waves, the Government often delayed making decisions until the problem was proven. I welcome the changes that they are making to try to get ahead of the curve this time, but as well as taking action on masks, they should advise those who can easily work from home to do so. They should promote “hands, face, space” again, to push it to people who may have got a little complacent.

The Government should also look at how to support the installation and improvement of ventilation. Covid is airborne. Hon. Members will remember how smoke used to hang in a pub before the smoking ban. Any Member who has ever worked in pubs, as I did as a student, will know that smoke would still be hanging there the next morning. That is the issue with poorly ventilated spaces, as we have seen from the outbreaks associated with Committee Rooms in the House.

The arrival of such a variant was inevitable. Last spring, we heard warm words about a global response to a global crisis, but while more than 85% of adults in the UK have been double-vaccinated, the figure is less than 4% in low-income countries, including many that have not been able to vaccinate their healthcare workers.

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

Does the evolution of an immune escape variant, which omicron may be, occur because of a vaccinated immune population or because of a naive population?

[Dr Whitford]

I think that its emergence in southern Africa would suggest that it is from a naive population. One of the issues with our complacency here and reliance on vaccination while allowing very high case numbers is that through Darwinism it can pre-select for vaccine-resistant variants and mutations. Those are the ones that will get a grip; the ones that are vaccine-susceptible will not, because we are so vaccinated.

Allowing high spread, which means common mutations, is a problem wherever it happens, but in the naive populations in the global south there is a real danger. They do not have testing, they do not have the materials, they do not have genomics and they do not have vaccines, so the danger is that they will therefore get a variant that builds up and eventually comes to Europe and to the UK. Sending occasional batches that are almost out of date, as was reported recently to us in the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, does not allow Governments in the global south to prepare and use vaccines within date.

The UK is still among the countries blocking a TRIPS waiver. We must realise that it is not a matter of just sharing some leftover doses. We need to massively increase global population, which means sharing intellectual property and sharing technological expertise. If anything, this variant should be a reminder that no one is safe until everyone is safe.