Oral Answers to Questions Debate
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Sheryll Murray
Main Page: Sheryll Murray (Conservative - South East Cornwall)Department Debates - View all Sheryll Murray's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jo Churchill
I recognise the hon. Lady’s concern in this area. I assure her that I am working closely with NHS Improvement and the chief dental officer. I have held several meetings over the past week alone, and tomorrow I am meeting the chair of the British Dental Association. Some areas of challenge that she articulates, such as fallow time and so on, are things that we are actively working on at pace, as well as looking at specific testing solutions for dentistry. We are also looking at the issue of ventilation. I am happy to report when further work has been achieved.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
Yesterday, the House will know that we secured 5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, so we have now secured access to 355 million vaccine doses through agreements with seven separate vaccine developers. We have secured them for the whole UK.
Mrs Murray [V]
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. What assessment has he done of the logistics necessary to deliver a vaccine to more rural areas, such as Cornwall?
Matt Hancock
We have done a huge amount of work. The deployment of the vaccine is, of course, being led by the NHS, which reaches into all parts of the UK. Our principled approach is that we will deploy the vaccine according to clinical need in every single part of the UK at the same time. That, of course, includes rural areas. A significant amount of work has gone into how best to deploy to rural areas, especially as some of the people who clinically will need to get the vaccine first are also those who might find it most difficult to travel. It is a very important question on which a huge amount of work is being done.