Coronavirus

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend rightly talks about chronology: feeling ill, dialling 111 and then going to take the test itself. However, may I echo the concerns about the self-test capability? He points out the difficulties with accuracy. I am concerned that about one fifth of the UK workforce might be off ill, many of whom may not develop the full symptoms. Will he look at our ability to advance a capability to self-test in the near future? That would eliminate many of the workforce going off unnecessarily.

[Matt Hancock]

Absolutely—in fact, there was a very big conference in London today on precisely this issue. We are working with dozens of companies on it. We will work with anybody and scour the world for a solution, as my right hon. Friend describes. I just add one thing: he talked about how I had described what people should do if they feel ill—they should call 111—but also, going to the 111 website is really, really important, because that takes pressure off the call centres and many people can get the answers they need without talking to someone.