argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Of course, self-isolation following contact or following a positive test, or in quarantine from abroad, is absolutely critical, and we have brought in measures to improve self-isolation, such as the £500 payment and strengthening the enforcement around it, and we are always looking for what we can do to strengthen self-isolation; the Prime Minister was absolutely right in what he said earlier, and there is a huge amount of work under way on it.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, as we have discussed many times, that is happening—absolutely—and it is the link between the national and the local that is the solution here. I will come on to testing in more detail later because I have some new things to say about it. In the meantime, the other thing we need to do, of course, is make sure that for this second peak—the second wave—we do all we can to support those institutions that are helping us through it, and first among those is, of course, the NHS The NHS is better prepared for this second wave, and I want to thank the NHS and everybody who works in it for their efforts over the past few months to ensure that we are better prepared. We know infinitely more things about coronavirus now than we knew as the first wave hit. Our Nightingale hospitals, for instance, stand ready and are being restarted in the parts of the country that need them. The independent sector has stepped up to the mark to help us work through the backlog of the vital elective operations and to help keep going with elective operations, even through this second peak. We have hired more staff, with 13,700 more nurses and 7,800 more doctors. We have provided £3 billion of extra funding across health and social care. Personal protective equipment is widely and freely available, and infection control procedures have been significantly strengthened, based on better understanding of transmission of the virus, including aerosol as well as droplet and fomite transmission.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Luke Morgan Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I am glad to hear that preparations are under way. I have had several emails from constituents in Bosworth who are worried about their routine operations; their follow-up might be lost. They remember what happened in the last lockdown, when they were not able to get that follow-up. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that all NHS appointments will be going ahead as best they can?
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, absolutely, and my hon. Friend makes a critical point. If in Bosworth someone is waiting for an operation on the NHS, they are more likely to get it if we keep the virus suppressed—in fact, if we keep it down, they will get that operation and we will get it done. Unfortunately, in the parts of the country where things have got too high, non-urgent, non-cancer elective operations have had to be cancelled. That demonstrates that, both for covid and non-covid health reasons, it is better to keep the virus suppressed I was halfway through my long list of the things that the NHS has been doing to prepare over the summer. At the moment, we are delivering 159 A&E upgrades; as far as I know, that is the biggest number of concurrent upgrades to emergency care in the NHS’s history. We have radically expanded telemedicine in primary and outpatient care. We are introducing 111 First, with an expanded 111 service to help people get the care that they need The NHS has learned how to treat covid patients better too, of course: not just by discovering treatments such as dexamethasone, in which the NHS played a critical part, but by improving clinical techniques—earlier oxygenation and later ventilation, for instance. As a result, our rate of hospital-acquired infection is down and the number of people who survive covid in hospital is up. We have been able to set an explicit goal that all cancer treatment should continue throughout this second wave, which speaks precisely to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) made But even with this expanded NHS and with the better treatments, the extra investment and the brilliance of the whole NHS team, who have done and learned so much about the virus and worked so hard to prepare—even with all that—and even if the NHS were twice as big as it is now, it could not cope, and no health service could, if the virus continued to grow as it is now. We must control the virus, to protect the NHS and ensure that it is always there, to treat patients with covid and patients with all other conditions.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): One of the wonderful things that my right hon. Friend has done is make available so much data. I am looking at the case data for Liverpool, and there it is—daily cases by specimen date. Thank goodness the number is now falling, and on a seven-day basis, again, it is falling. I am just wondering why now anyone in Liverpool would say anything other than that the Government’s previous strategy is now working. Why on earth, then, would people in other areas that are not even as badly off as Liverpool—or indeed Manchester, where the cases seem to be stabilising—want to see an even tighter lockdown?
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Unfortunately, in Liverpool the overall case rate includes a very high peak among students. The over-60s case rate, which is also published on the same website, shows a flattening, but a flattening at a very high level, such that Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has already had to cancel non-urgent, non-cancer elective activity The danger of a plateauing at a high level, as the chief medical officer set out, is that if the rate starts to go up again, we are already under significant pressure in the NHS in Liverpool. The same argument goes for Tyneside, where again the overall case rate appears to be coming down, which is good news. The number among the over-60s, however, is flattening, again at a very high level, and in other parts of the country, including areas in tier 3, the numbers were going up It is not good enough just to control R and keep it lower than its natural rate; we have to get it below 1 to be able to change from a doubling time to a halving time of this virus. Even I—the most enthusiastic supporter of the tier system—can see that, unfortunately, cases were rising and the cases among the over-60s are rising, including in the areas with tier 3 restrictions. It is important to strip out from those data the outbreak among students. I have talked before about there being two overlapping epidemics: one among students and one among the wider community.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
William Peter Wragg (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend lists the many commendable achievements of the national health service in the period since the first wave, but the main contention is that this policy is for ICU capacity issues. What specifically has been done over the summer to increase that capacity?
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): There has been a significant capacity increase in critical care, which includes ICU but is not only ICU. We have a wider definition of critical care, which is important. Many people with covid do not need formal ICU intubation; they need critical care, including oxygenation, when they are not anaesthetised but on oxygen treatment. On that measure of critical care, which is the care required for covid, there has been a significant increase, including significant investment in the NHS around the country. I should have had that on my list.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Aaron Stuart Bell (Conservative, Centre-right): Further to my right hon. Friend’s answers to my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), it has been a fact for a long time that the three figures that are reported most often are the number of tests, the number of cases and, regrettably, the number of deaths. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the media and we should focus much more on the data on NHS capacity? That, rather than tests and cases, should be the message.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): They are all important. Often, people focus on the cases, because they are one of the earliest indicators of the direction. The case rate among the over-60s is highly correlated with what happens to hospital admissions a week or 10 days later. That is why we focus on the over-60s case rate and now publish that data too, because looking at that as well as the overall case rate is important Nevertheless, my hon. Friend is absolutely right that although the translation of cases into hospitalisations and poor health outcomes is harder to estimate, the number of hospital admissions with covid is a concrete fact that we cannot get away from. We cannot escape the fact that that is rising and has been rising sharply. Even if we expanded the NHS enormously—we have, both in critical care and in terms of the potential capacity in the Nightingales, should it be needed, but even if we doubled the size of the NHS—once we are on an exponential growth curve, it would still be too small to cope if the virus were to run riot.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): The covid vaccine taskforce is about the procurement of the vaccines. That is a matter for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The Department has put out a statement and made clear the circumstances around that conference. What I would say is that I am very happy to answer any questions on vaccines. As the hon. Member says, we have procured a number of vaccines. We have procured six in total, two of which are the two leading vaccines in the world. The taskforce has done an excellent job of making sure that we have one of the strongest procurement pipelines for vaccines in the world.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): This is probably about how we should not use the private sector in test and trace, despite the fact that we have hit our target of more than 500,000 tests a day on time, as we have each of the targets for testing. I am very proud of that.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, absolutely. With comments like those, the hon. Lady should come over to this side of the House if she wants to be part of the big team effort. She obviously did not get the memo that says, "If you sit on the Opposition side, you have to attack anybody in the private sector who is helping." We have to pull together, because coronavirus is a powerful adversary. It has the power to overwhelm our hospitals, disrupt our economy and suspend the moments that make life so special, so we must take the hard but crucial steps to get it under control, and we will stand behind every single person who joins in this national effort. Everybody has a role to play, and as we come together once more, we must all work and make sacrifices to protect those who we love at this time of national need.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Michael Jon Wood (Conservative, Centre-right): The shadow Health Secretary risks inadvertently misleading the House in suggesting that SAGE was recommending a two-week circuit-breaking lockdown. As he knows, it has strongly suggested that what it was talking about was a series of lockdowns. Is that still Labour’s position?
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): We cannot let this stand—what a load of nonsense. The NHS went into this crisis with the highest funding level in its history, with more doctors than at any time in its history, with more nurses than at any time in its history and with the biggest hospital building programme in its history. The investment from this Government in this NHS is the highest that has ever been made by any British Government in history, and that is why it is only we who are the party of the NHS.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman mentions dormitories in mental health services. Dormitories have plagued mental health services for years and years and years—and who are the first Government to not only commit, but to put the funding in to end dormitories in mental health services? It is this Conservative Government. It is not only that this Government are the Government for the NHS and that we are the party of the NHS; we are also the party investing record sums in mental health services, with the biggest increase of all the increases in funding going into mental health services, including to end the dormitories in mental health services that have existed ever since the NHS was created.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I wholeheartedly support these measures. When we look at the starkness of the data presented to the country at the weekend, we see that the issue is not whether the lockdown is wise, but whether we use the lockdown wisely. I hope that the Health Secretary will forgive me, as his predecessor, if I set out one or two of the things we need to use the next month to sort out if we are to ensure that this is the last coronavirus lockdown and that it is a short one First, it will not surprise the Health Secretary that I say this, but we must introduce weekly testing of NHS staff. In the first wave, up to 11% of coronavirus hospital deaths happened to people who picked up their infection in their own hospital. For the basic principles of patient safety and staff safety, we must make sure that that does not happen a second time; otherwise cancer patients will worry whether it is safe to go to their hospital, staff will worry about whether they are infecting their own patients and we will see the NHS again descend into being a covid-only service. We had some hospitals in London where more than 40% of staff were infected in the previous wave. It would be unforgiveable to let that happen again. I know that the Secretary of State is sympathetic and would like to do this. I would just urge him to do it as soon as possible.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I would be very grateful, and I know that staff everywhere would be grateful, if my right hon. Friend could give some indication of when all NHS staff can be confident that they will be tested, but I thank him very much for that answer Secondly, I hope the Secretary of State will not mind me saying that this is the moment when we have to fix contact tracing. To be reaching only 60% of people’s known contacts is not good enough. He knows that, and he does not try to defend it—
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): No, no. This is the point: when we have 50,000 people being infected every single day, it is a massive logistical task, but if we are honest, we still had problems when it was a tenth of that number being infected every day. This is the moment to recognise the uncomfortable truth that this would be better done locally, with local authorities taking the ultimate responsibility. While we are making these changes to the contact tracing regime, to have only 20% of people who are infected and told to self-isolate actually complying suggests only one answer, which is that we as the state should pay their wages for the period that they have been asked to isolate. That is expensive, but it is less expensive than the cost of them not complying with the important direction to isolate On a more technical matter, I ask the Health Secretary to consider whether there is a way we can speed up the approval of the new therapeutic drugs that are coming online. As he knows, we generally wait until both safety and efficacy are proved before approval is given to a new drug. However, in a pandemic, would it not be right to allow the mass marketing of drugs to go ahead as soon as they are deemed safe, even though we cannot guarantee their efficacy? That could save lives, and any delay might mean that people could not get the benefits of those new drugs I want to finish on the issue of population testing. My right hon. Friend and I have had many discussions about this and again I know that he is sympathetic. We are in an immensely stronger position because of the huge improvements in testing capacity that he rightly celebrated in his earlier comments. However grave the situation we are in now, it would be a whole lot graver if we had not increased testing capacity from 10,000 a day to 100,000 a day, and then to 500,000 a day last week and potentially 1 million a day by Christmas. We are not far off the 2 million a day that would be needed to test the whole population every month Now is the time for us to tell the public how we are going to chart a course to that destination, because this is the only true light at the end of the tunnel. Charting a course to that destination means charting a course through the incredibly complex logistics and through the technology that will be necessary to record who has or has not had their positive test on time, but if we can show people that there is a date next spring by which the whole population will be tested on a regular basis, we will also be showing people that there is a way through this pandemic. In that way, our national depression would be lifted and we would be able to give the hope to our constituents that is now in such desperately short supply.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Luke Morgan Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): This debate serves as a good place to set the scene for 48 hours’ time. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) that a large number of people will want to speak in that debate and consideration should be given to increasing its length In 48 hours’ time, we will be looking at measures to protect the NHS—to stop it being overburdened, to protect the workforce, to protect the most vulnerable, and to try to help get through non-covid and covid problems. In 48 hours’ time, we will be voting on the economic impact, trying to mitigate the measures we are putting in place, trying to maintain businesses and to support jobs, trying to create covid-secure measures, and discussing the impact on the finances of this country for our children and our children’s children. In 48 hours’ time, there will be a vote, and every Member will have to consider the impact of what that means I want to spend the few minutes I have talking about the pragmatic side before we get to the debate on Wednesday, which I hope to speak in. I think it was Lincoln who said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe." That is what I want the Government to do in the next 48 hours. The one benefit we have is that we have learned from last time’s lockdown. We know what it looked like. People know what it looked like. This House knows what it looked like. Therefore, we can use these 48 hours to pull the guidance together to deal with the concerns, iron out the anomalies—for example, on garden centres—and explain the differences: that schools are now open, that we now have bubbles, and that people now understand that they should get a test. This is something we have control over as the Government—the communication of how we put that message out. We have 48 hours to get that right. The concerns from Bosworth in my email inbox today are many and varied, from non-covid work, health work and mental health, to golf and fishing, to the ability to take away beer or go to the gym and faith meetings. The Minister and the Secretary of State were kind enough to be at my meeting on Sunday to hear these questions from many MPs. Indeed, we have heard them raised yet again tonight. The civil service is looking at how to put this all in place. I urge the Government to hear those messages, to learn from what we have seen before, and, even better, to put it all together in a document that compares what we had before with what we are having in future so that everyone, from MPs in this House to the general public, can see what has changed and what stays the same. We have 48 hours to sharpen the guidance ready for Wednesday. I hope that on Wednesday, in doing that, we can cut down covid.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not know whether the hon. Lady has noticed, but scientific experts, even in the same field of epidemiology, quite often disagree profoundly. I wonder whether Labour has noticed that and what it plans to do about it. If the hon. Lady is looking for any ideas, I have tweeted out a summary of a book on the subject.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Nadine Vanessa Dorries (Conservative, Centre-right): Obviously, I cannot answer from a sedentary position. On the care package, the hon. Lady will need to meet another Minister, but I will take her request on. I am the Minister for mental health, not for care workers, but I will pass that on for her.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2020-11-02
Topic: Health
Nadine Vanessa Dorries (Conservative, Centre-right): Madam Deputy Speaker, this is a rather unusual way of closing a debate. We have a very comprehensive package in place for key workers, which has been provided by the NHS, and I am happy to detail that when I give my closing speech.
DHSC Answers to Written Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-19
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he will be aware, other Departments, while they have heavy workloads, are not leading the response to the pandemic. In response to his final point, he will not be surprised that I do not characterise it in that way. Instead, I would characterise it as the Department of Health being in the lead in saving lives and protecting the NHS in this country My hon. Friend asked two other substantive questions. I think his language was a little intemperate in respect of the serious efforts that officials undertake every day to try to provide accurate and timely answers. There is no suggestion that they seek to stonewall or to avoid responding. They do their best, but it is difficult and the situation changes day by day. Where answers are deemed to be inadequate, hon. Members often revert to me directly or table their questions again, and we endeavour to fulfil our obligation to provide accurate answers On my hon. Friend’s question about recovery, we have set a trajectory for each month in order to recover performance over the coming months. Of course, that depends to a degree on the workload of officials in responding to the pandemic, as well as in providing answers, but I do not see it as an either/or; we intend to recover performance in parallel with tackling the pandemic.