Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2021-07-21
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for this discussion on the Statement made on Monday in the Commons. In fact, even since Monday the world has moved on. The infection rate continues to rise. There are mixed messages from government Ministers about responses to the ping. For example, does the Minister share my concern that the Investment Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, wrote to the car manufacturer Nissan, pointing out that isolating after being pinged by the app was only "advisory" and that there was no "legal duty" to isolate? I recall the noble Lord explaining this to the House some weeks ago at my prompting. Indeed, many noble Lords came to me afterwards and said that they had not realised that there was no legal obligation to isolate after the ping. There is huge confusion now about vaccine passports, and 1 million children are out of school as their term ends. Here in London, we still have some challenges about getting people vaccinated So let us start with the issue of the vaccination of teenagers. The MHRA has approved the Pfizer jab for all 12 to 18 year-olds. Indeed, such countries as the United States, Canada, Israel, France, Austria, Spain, Hong Kong and others have started or soon will be vaccinating their 12 to 18 year-olds. Can the Minister tell us when we might start doing the same The Prime Minister obviously took fright on Monday, because on Tuesday he made the announcements about vaccine passports in September. I think that even he could see that nightclubs were offering superspreader events, with music and strobe lights attached to them—talk about closing the door after the horse has bolted The risk of death to children from Covid is mercifully very low, but they can become very sick and develop long-term conditions and long Covid. Indeed, according to the Office for National Statistics, 14.5% of children aged 12 to 16 have symptoms lasting longer than five weeks. Will the Minister spell out in detail the clinical basis for why the JCVI has made its decision? Will he publish all the analysis and documents in the same way that SAGE has published its analysis, not just its advice? Will he guarantee that this decision was made on medical grounds, not on the grounds of vaccine supply The Statement talks about infection among children being disruptive. We know that infection among children is highly disruptive for learning. We have seen hundreds of thousands of children out of school. We are not vaccinating all adolescents. Can the Minister tell the House what the Government’s plan for September is, when children return to school? For example, are the Government considering using this summer to install air filtration units in every classroom in every school Testing is already stretched, with turnaround times lengthening, so can the Minister guarantee that through the summer, especially once contacts can be released from isolation on the back of a negative PCR test in August, and into September when schools return, there will be sufficient PCR testing capacity to meet demand? As we move into autumn and winter, we can anticipate more flu and respiratory viruses, so do we need multi-pathogen testing going forward? Is this being developed It has been announced that critical workers such as food, health, utility and border staff with two Covid jabs will be able to avoid self-isolation. Many ambulance and acute hospital trusts have found themselves under extreme pressure because of the combination of very high demand and very high levels of staff absence due to self-isolation Three weeks ago, the Health Secretary told us that unlocking would make us "healthier" and promised us it would be "irreversible", but today we have some of the highest infection rates in the world. Can the Minister tell us what the experts say about the risk of reimposing new restrictions in future? Our already exhausted NHS staff face a summer crisis. Covid admissions are already running at about 550 a day, and hospitals are now all cancelling cancer surgery. For example, liver transplant operations were cancelled in Birmingham last week It is clear that more infections mean more isolation. The NHS staff released from isolation if double-jabbed will still want to protect themselves and their patients, so will the Minister ensure that the standard of masks worn in NHS settings is upgraded to the FFP3 requirement that NHS staff have called for? What is his plan for keeping the economy and public services functioning through the summer, as more and more people are asked to isolate? Can the Minister confirm reports that SAGE scientists have advised that some measures, such as mandatory masks and working from home, should be reinstated at the beginning of August Recent days have seen some of the lowest numbers getting first-time jabs on record, with the daily average now lower than at any point since the start of the programme—although I suspect the Prime Minister is hoping that his threat that you will need a vaccine passport to get into a nightclub might help in that direction. Unused vaccine doses are being sent back by GPs as demand for jabs slows to a fraction of recent levels, yet we still have millions of unvaccinated adults. Does the Minister share my concern that falling demand, combined with emerging evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines beginning to wane over time, may mean that we in this country will be less protected in September Finally, I understand that the "hands, face, space" slogan is about to be dropped in favour of a plea to "Keep life moving", despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are still isolating. Can the Minister explain what this actually means?