Covid-19 Update

Steve Brine Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I think I speak for everybody here when I say what we want to see is the House getting back to normal business as fast as possible, and to that end I suggest that everybody follows the guidelines and gets boosted.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

The Prime Minister deserves real credit for his recent decisions on covid. He has followed the evidence, but he has also taken the wider view of our society and our economy, and that has to be right. In my opinion, England is not out of step with Scotland and Wales—they are out of step with us. May I ask my right hon. Friend to also take the long view? It is increasingly clear that we are a long way from learning to live with covid, but we also have an NHS on a permanent war footing, and that is not sustainable. What is the long-term plan for living with covid in 2022, and could that include any changes to mandatory isolation and test and trace? For instance, we see different isolation dates in the United States and Germany from here in the UK.

[The Prime Minister]

We will continue to keep isolation timings under review. We do not want to release people back in to society or to their workplace so soon that they just infect all their colleagues; that would not be sensible. As I said in my earlier answers, we have a good chance of getting through this difficult wave and getting back to something like normality as fast as possible. It is important that omicron seems to provide some sort of immunity against delta, for instance, and that may be a positive augury for the future.