Public Health — House of Commons, 2021-12-14
Topic: Health
Layla Michelle Moran (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The past week has been tumultuous. We are about to go off on our Christmas break. The only positive thing that has emerged from party-gate is that it took Boris Johnson—[Interruption.] I do apologise. It took the Prime Minister potentially being on the front pages of all the newspapers on Monday morning to come out in favour of a different approach to plan B. I can only say thank goodness for party-gate. Had that not happened, I wonder how much longer we would have waited for the Government to act. The reason why that matters is that, every single step of the way through this pandemic, the longer we have waited, the worse things have got. The sooner we act, the less we have to act and the better the benefits This morning, the all-party group on coronavirus heard from the experts, many of whom advise the Government, and from people who represent frontline NHS workers. We wanted them to answer simple questions: "What is going on?" "Tell us about omicron." Also, "Is it enough?" On omicron itself, the news is startling. Two-day doubling is quite scary. Even if all the population had boosters today, because it takes 12 days, more or less, for a person to develop immunity and become protected, the numbers would increase by 60 times. That is why the two-day doubling matters. It is true that when we get that booster immunity in place, the time of doubling will increase, which is a good thing, because we want to reduce that peak. My concern is that we have not gone fast enough soon enough Let us look at evidence from places such as Denmark and South Africa. Much has been made of South Africa, but it is true to say that our populations are not directly comparable. There are some things of which we need to take heed. For example, just this morning, there has been new evidence to suggest that omicron affects young children more than delta. It takes tiny percentages of children getting sick for us to start seeing them following through into hospital admissions. We should remember that children are, as yet, unvaccinated; they have no protection at all. So the first plea I make to Ministers is where is the plan for children? It needs to go beyond hoping that they are going to be okay, because it would seem that this variant is potentially a threat. I will send Ministers the evidence I have seen, which is sincerely alarming, and I hope they take it seriously The other thing we see from Denmark is the shape of these curves. I know that this is hard to show when talking, but for the benefit of Hansard, the blue line is delta and the red line is omicron. This is data coming from Denmark, and I will post it on Twitter if people want to look at it. However, for the benefit of Hansard, the blue line looks like a gentle slope and the red line looks like a hockey stick, and that is deeply alarming. So what do the Government need to do? They have gone from plan A to plan B, and they are considering, once they get plan B through, moving from B to C. I was a teacher before, and if that was happening to a student of mine, I would get the parents in and get them to have a chat, because we need to go from B to B-plus What does B-plus mean? It is the booster—absolutely, it is the booster—but we have to recognise that between now and then it is not enough. We need to ventilate our public spaces. We need to provide support for social care, because unblocking those beds in the NHS requires extra support in social care. We need to ensure that test, trace and isolate works, which means allowing people to get tested—we have seen issues with that already—but we also need to help them to isolate. We need to limit mixing, and if people will not do it themselves, the Government need to act. We also need to bear in mind the effect of long covid in all of this. If there are huge numbers of people who already have it, many more are going to have that. So I urge the Government: do not hesitate, act quickly, please do not curb Christmas, and go from B to B-plus now so that we can enjoy the holiday ahead.