Covid-19 Update Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Steve Baker
Main Page: Steve Baker (Conservative - Wycombe)Department Debates - View all Steve Baker's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con) [V]
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the fruits of his tireless work, along with officials and others in the Government, including delivering mobile testing in Wycombe, but could he please tell us a little bit more about what he is doing to restore the full range and scale of elective surgery in the NHS, so that people with non-covid conditions can get their treatment back on track?
Matt Hancock
That is a really important point. It is critical, because the overall impact of coronavirus is not just the direct morbidity—the number of people who sadly die from coronavirus itself; there is also the wider impact, including those whose treatment has been delayed owing to the necessity of ensuring that the NHS was ready to cope with coronavirus, or because, for clinical reasons, it was important to delay the treatment because there is such a virulent virus at large. We are working very hard to restore treatments for non-covid reasons. That work has started. I was able to announce last week, for instance, that fertility treatment has restarted and cancer treatment is restarting, and other elective surgeries will restart as soon as it is safe to do so.