Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 11 November 2020
To respond to Brian Whittle’s point, we not only can do it—we will do it.
I, too, express my thanks to all our health and social care staff and our emergency workers, and I offer my condolences in particular to the families of those health and social care staff who have lost their lives to the virus.
In my opening remarks, I said that I did not expect much disagreement in the debate. That has largely proved to be the case, but members have tripped over some inaccuracies and—I think—unreasonable assertions that I assume were made as a political point, so I will clarify some of those.
On test and protect, I point out that the World Health Organization’s target calls for
“At least 80% of new cases”
to
“have their close contacts traced and in quarantine within 72 hours of case confirmation.”
The most recent figures published by our independent statisticians to 8 November show that 95.8 per cent of contact tracing of all positive cases is completed within 72 hours.
It is not fair to test and protect staff to assert that they are not performing well—they are performing very well—nor is it accurate to assert that we do not have enough of them, because we have 2,221 fully trained contact tracers.
Let me clarify the routes for testing—and I think that we have done this before. Those routes matter—this is not a point made for the sake of it. We have two routes for testing: either through the United Kingdom’s Lighthouse lab or through the NHS labs. The route to the UK Lighthouse lab is through the regional testing centres, the mobile testing units and the local walk-through centres. Those are for symptomatic individuals.
We have a satellite route through the UK lab, which is the one that we have been using for care home workers who are asymptomatic. Although the turnaround times at the UK Lighthouse lab have improved for all other routes, the improvement has not been enough, or has not been sustained enough, for the satellite route and for home care. That is why we are moving care home worker testing to our own NHS labs. The other route is through NHS labs, which can cover asymptomatic individuals and where the turnaround times are consistently at or under 24 hours.
As members have indicated, roll-out by clinical prioritisation, for just two of the groups that we have mentioned, means totals of 82,000 or thereabouts for care-at-home staff and at least 132,500 for NHS staff if we prioritise that group—although we want to ensure that we include our paramedic workforce, too, along with care home relatives, visiting professionals and emergency admissions, which is particularly important for ensuring that, when an emergency admission comes into the acute setting, it will follow either the green non-Covid pathway or the red Covid pathway. That in itself contributes to a reduction in nosocomial infections. The roll-out of asymptomatic testing is undoubtedly important, and it is very important for that group, as well as the others. As I said earlier, I look forward to returning to the chamber before the end of the month to deliver our plan for just that.
The Government is happy to support both the motion and Mr Cameron’s amendment.
16:27