Viscount Eccles
Main Page: Viscount Eccles (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Covid-19: Economic Costs
Viscount Eccles Excerpts
Baroness Penn
My understanding is that local authorities get Covid data on a daily basis and that, since 20 July, individual-level data has been available to the teams that respond to outbreaks in local authorities.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
Bearing in mind that this excellent paper is entitled Living with COVID-19 and that at the present time we have no idea how long we will have to live with it, and given that the paper concentrates on balancing, when do the Government intend to widen the debate to bring in advice from other academically qualified people such as economists and behavioural scientists, alongside the medical advice that they now receive?
Baroness Penn
I can reassure my noble friend that behavioural scientists make up part of the group of experts who are contributing to SAGE. In addition to that, the views of economists in the Treasury and elsewhere are inputted into Cabinet decision-making. My noble friend is right that we are going to have to learn to live with this disease for some time, so the safe reopening of our economy is focused on getting the public to make measures such as hand washing and social distancing part of their everyday lives until we find a longer-term solution, such as a vaccine.