The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 2 March.
“Today marks 12 weeks since Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to receive a clinically approved vaccine for Covid-19. She has since been joined by over 20 million other citizens of this country in the biggest and fastest vaccination effort the world has ever seen.
This is a phenomenal achievement. Our vaccination programme is a national success story for the whole United Kingdom, and the reason it matters is that it allows us to replace the protection currently given by restrictions on our freedoms with the protection from science.
The data confirms that this strategy is working because the vaccines work. The number of hospital admissions is falling faster than the number of new cases, whereas in the first peak it fell more slowly, and the fall in hospitalisations is faster among the age groups vaccinated first than in younger age groups yet to get a jab.
I can tell the House about some further analysis that backs up this excellent news. The halving time of hospital admissions is now every 18 days. Over the past fortnight, it has fallen for those aged over 85 from 18 days to 15. This morning, the Office for National Statistics published data showing the number of deaths falling by over a quarter a week in mid-February. More than that, the number of deaths each day is not only falling faster than after the first peak, but it is falling faster in the over-80s, who got the jab first, compared with the under-80s. The number of daily deaths is halving every 12 days, but among the over-80s it is now halving every 10, so while the fall in cases is decelerating, the fall in the number of deaths is accelerating. What all this shows is that the vaccine is working, reducing the number of deaths among those who were vaccinated first and preventing hospital admissions. This is real-world evidence that the vaccine is protecting the NHS and saving lives, that the 12-week dosing regime is saving lives, and that this country’s strategy is working.
As well as this real-world data, I would like to update the House on two new pieces of analytical research published over the last 24 hours. First, this morning the Office for National Statistics published new data on the levels of protection people have. They show that up to 11 February, one in four people is estimated to have antibodies against coronavirus in England, up from one in five. The levels are highest in the over-80s, the first group to be vaccinated, showing again the protection from the vaccine across the country. The second piece of research, published last night, shows that a single dose of either the Oxford or the Pfizer vaccine delivers protection against severe infection in the over-70s, with a more than 80% reduction in hospitalisations. It is great news that both vaccines work so effectively. In fact, the protection from catching Covid 35 days after the first jab is even slightly better for the Oxford jab than for the Pfizer, so people can have confidence that they will get protection, whichever jab they are offered.
I am grateful for the work of colleagues across the House in promoting vaccine take-up, which has helped to deliver some of the highest levels of enthusiasm for vaccination in the whole world, and I am pleased to inform the House that we are now inviting over-60s to be vaccinated too. Although the day-to-day figures for supply are lumpy, we have some bumper weeks ahead later this month. Given that our vaccination programme began 12 weeks ago today, from now we begin in earnest our programme of second vaccinations, which ramps up over the month of March. I can assure the House that we have factored these second jabs into our supply projections, and we are on track to meet our target of offering a vaccine to all priority groups 1 to 9 by 15 April and to all adults by the end of July.
Our vaccination programme means that we can set out our road map to freedom and put this pandemic behind us, but we must stay vigilant because Covid-19, like all viruses, mutates over time. Part of controlling any virus is responding to new variants as they arise, just as we do with flu each year. Knowing this, we invested in genomic sequencing right at the start of the pandemic, giving the UK one of the biggest genomic sequencing capabilities in the world. Thanks to that, we have been able to spot variants here at home and support others to detect variants in other parts of the world.
I would like to update the House on the six cases of the variant of concern that was first identified in Manaus in Brazil and that we have now identified here in the UK. We know that five of those six people quarantined at home, as they were legally required to do. We have been in contact with them, and I would like to put on record my gratitude to them for doing their duty and following the rules. Whenever we identify cases of a new variant, we respond fast and come down hard by bringing in enhanced sequencing and testing, so we are stepping up our testing and sequencing in South Gloucestershire as a precaution. We have no information to suggest that the variant has spread further.
Unfortunately, one of the six cases completed a test but did not successfully complete the contact details. Incidents like this are rare and occur only in around 0.1% of tests. I can update the House with the latest information on identifying this case. We have identified the batch of home test kits in question, and our search has narrowed from the whole country down to 379 households in the south-east of England. We are contacting each one. We are grateful that a number of potential cases have come forward following the call that we put out over the weekend, and I would like to thank colleagues from across the House who have helped us to get the message out there.
Our current vaccines have not yet been studied against this variant. We are working to understand what impact it might have, but we do know that the variant has caused significant challenges in Brazil, so we are doing all we can to stop the spread of this new variant in the UK, to analyse its effects, to develop an updated vaccine that works on all these variants of concern, and to protect the progress that we have made as a nation. This country is on the road to recovery and we have freedom on the horizon. We must proceed with caution because although we are moving quickly, the virus moves quickly too. Let us not waver; let us do whatever it takes to keep this virus under control.”
My Lords, I thank the Minister for this Statement. I agree with the Statement in congratulating the NHS on its rollout of the vaccine, which continues to be a huge cause for optimism and hope, as does the science and research, in which the UK has played a leading role. However, we are still the country that has the third highest number of deaths in the world, at 124,000. Given the success of the vaccine and the strength of our science base, that is dismal. It must at least in part be attributed to decisions that the Government have taken or not taken, the failure of test and trace to do the job that we need it to do and the porous nature of our borders, on which we have again seen decisions taken too little, too late.
The concern about new variants means that, if the UK does not get on top of them, the valiant efforts of our NHS, our scientists and the vaccine could be terribly undermined. In January and February, cases here were running at tens of thousands a day and we were in lockdown, as we still are, because of our home- grown, new infectious variant. Nevertheless, people were allowed to fly in from abroad, bringing the P1 Brazilian mutation with them. Throughout history, epidemic after epidemic has exploited international travel. Surely it is obvious that tougher border controls should have been in place sooner.
The Brazilian variant cases arrived a month ago. They showed the problems of delays as well as the limitations of the pre-travel tests that did not catch those cases. Even now, 99% of the 15,000 daily arrivals are not covered by hotel quarantine. Most people can still travel home from the airport by Tube, train or even plane, mixing with others, as some of these travellers did, without being tested on arrival in the UK. Why are the Government still refusing to introduce additional tests on arrival and still allowing international passengers to travel onward on UK public transport? Does the Minister recognise that those gaps in the system will let more new variant cases spread? Is it also the case that there is a risk of cross-infection at airports where congestion is occurring? I understand that yesterday there were queues that lasted for several hours at Heathrow. What are the Government going to do about this? It is shocking that people are mixing, having arrived from a list of countries at risk, instead of going straight into hotels for isolation.
My Lords, from these Benches we, too, congratulate everyone involved in the vaccination process, including our brilliant teams of scientists, both in this country and abroad, who have been working—and continue to work—tirelessly on safe and effective vaccines for the world. We also congratulate the teams who are organising and managing the supply chains and all of those on the front line delivering jabs in arms, or supporting them to make it possible to reach the target of 20 million doses achieved this week. We will also not forget everyone working on Covid at the moment, whether front-line staff in health and social care or back-office staff who may not be visible to us but who are making sure that all these processes are working. We thank them all.
It is reassuring to hear that the second jab supply chain has been factored in, but can the Minister please tell the House if the supply chain and vaccination dose capacity is also protected for the next priority groups due to receive their first dose? This is critical to lifting lockdown.
It is good news that the clinical trials under way since before Christmas are demonstrating that the over-80s are developing good antibodies to resist the coronavirus and that this is now evident in the data. It is fascinating to see the vaccine gap in graphs, showing that there is a much steeper decline in cases in the over- 75s than there is in the under-60s. It is also encouraging to see reports that there have been very few side effects to both the AZ and the Pfizer vaccines. Can the Minister say if this information will be used to encourage those who have so far refused their first dose?
The Octave trial, funded by the Medical Research Council, is now under way, assessing whether those people with compromised immune systems are able to make antibodies. It was reassuring to read the details of this trial from some participating universities and university hospitals and I am grateful that Professor Chris Whitty was able to outline this project in a briefing to parliamentarians recently. I had understood it to be well under way already, although the press release makes it sound as if it is much more recent and still recruiting. Can the Minister say when the Octave trials are likely to publish their results, given that many people currently shielding are anxiously waiting for them?
My Lords, I am enormously grateful for the questions from both the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton. I start by echoing both their tributes to those involved in the rollout of the vaccine. It is a remarkable national achievement and we should all be enormously proud. My own wife was vaccinated last week, and she told me that she cried as she left the GP’s surgery—so moved was she by the experience. That is something I have heard many times before.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, paid tribute to all those involved in science and research, and I absolutely agree. This has been a remarkable moment for British science. We will start celebrating British Science Week tomorrow, and I cannot think of a more apt moment to do that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about the highest number of deaths. There are a number of reasons. Before I move on, I mention that today is World Obesity Day, and one of the most telling pieces of research that has come out in recent weeks is the work of PHE. We must all reflect on the nation’s health and whether obesity has played a role in Britain’s higher incidence of mortality. I look forward to reflecting on this issue more in the future.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked directly about the decisions that the Government have made, test and trace, and the borders. Let me tackle those head on. On the decisions that the Government have made, I share with the Chamber that the road map announced by the Prime Minister has landed extremely well. It is extremely conservative. It puts school openings first, which is undoubtedly the feedback we have had from both parents and the country at large. The easing of measures for the rest of the economy and civic activity is based entirely on the data that emerges from the infection rates and will be done in a way that contains the spread of the virus.
My Lords, we now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.
My Lords, the speed and scale of the vaccine rollout is indeed a remarkable achievement and reflects great credit to all involved. The House will have noted the publication this morning of the REACH study based on data from February. Among its findings was that there was some regional variation in prevalence, particularly in the later part of February. Will the Government on this basis consider regional variation in the pace at which restrictions are lifted, rather than necessarily assuming that it will be a uniform, national approach?
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Of course, I welcome the progress that the Government have made in identifying the batch of tests from which that of the missing infected person came, but how on earth can a test be processed that does not collect contact details? What mechanisms have been put in place to fix that for the future? Some £22 billion have been allocated to this system, but it feels as though someone has vanished into thin air. How is the hunt for this person proceeding? Can the Minister assure us that this will not happen again?
Is there any information suggesting why this variant is spreading? The Minister might recall that John Edmunds from SAGE told the Home Affairs Select Committee in January that for every identified South African variant case, there were probably another 30 that had not been identified. Can the Minister tell the House, therefore, whether he has received any estimates of the number of unidentified cases in the wider community?
We are in a race against the evolution of this virus, so we have a long way to go. To be frank, nowhere is Covid-safe until everywhere is Covid-safe. None of us wants to yo-yo in and out of lockdown, so will the Minister guarantee that the lockdown easing will, as promised, be absolutely based on data, not dates, and that the assessment time between each step will not be compromised?
I welcome the extra surge in testing, but what is the current timeframe for genetic sequencing? How can it be speeded up? What steps will be taken to ensure that areas such as Ashfield, Leicester, Watford, Worthing and Hyndburn are not left behind when the national lockdown restrictions begin to lift, or will those places be put in localised lockdowns? Will the local authorities there be given extra resources to do more door-to-door testing and retrospective tracing? Will workplaces in those areas be inspected by the Health and Safety Executive to ensure that they are Covid-secure? Will people finally be given decent sick pay and isolation support?
On the Budget, it beggars belief that it did not include any detailed plans for the NHS. Indeed, the OBR highlights this, saying:
“The Government’s spending plans make no explicit provision for virus-related costs beyond 2021-22, despite its Roadmap recognising that annual vaccination programmes and continued testing and tracing are likely to be required.”
We know that the last reorganisation of the NHS cost £3 billion and that does not seem to have been put into the Budget either. Can the Minister explain how the NHS will catch up with the enormous backlog that has been created, as well as the ongoing pandemic-related costs? This is an urgent question.
It has also emerged that the Government appear to have delayed social care reforms until 2022, with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Barclay, telling campaigners that plans for sustainable improvement will only come next year. In January, the Prime Minister told Parliament that the Government would bring forward plans later this year, so will the Minister confirm whether it is this year or next year or when they actually intend to launch reforms on social care?
The Statement refers to the Brazilian P1 variant and to the case of the individual who had not completed their form correctly. There has been silence over the last couple of days, and I wondered whether the Minister could update the House on the search for this individual. As I raised earlier this week, can the Minister help the House to understand why such an issue was able to happen at all? Is it correct that there are no processes in place to ensure that, as people come into the UK, border agency staff check their passports against the online forms completed in advance, so that personal details, such as addresses, are visible? The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, made it plain—as have many others travelling into the UK—that these checks are rarely made, if at all.
Is it correct that local health and resilience forums are not given any details of people quarantining in their areas? This is important to ensure that care support teams would be able to check and provide help for those quarantining if they have any concerns. That might have helped with this particular case: a traveller from Brazil feeling unwell would have had a local contact to talk to about what to do.
Finally, as we wait to see if cases, hospitalisations and deaths have reduced enough to start lifting lockdown carefully in April, can the Minister respond to the report published today showing that test and trace has barely used the check-in app data from visitors to pubs, restaurants and hairdressers, resulting in thousands of people who have been checked in not being warned that they might be at risk of infection? The report states that the Department of Health and Social Care has noted that more than 100 million people have checked into venues since it went live in the autumn, but only 284 alerts have been sent to 274 venues—not 274,000 venues, just 274. Worse, the report says that the lack of guidance for local resilience forum trace teams on how to use the data has left businesses being asked to, or volunteering to, contact customers and visitors, which is technically a breach of GDPR and leaves those businesses and venues open to potential legal challenge.
After spending £40 million on the contact tracing app, encouraging the public to act responsibly, and the department saying today:
“The NHS COVID-19 App is an important tool in our pandemic response”,
can the Minister tell us which of these statements are true? Can he confirm that the guidance given to local authority health departments on how to use the data to notify people from the app is in full compliance with GDPR legislation? Is the figure of only 274 venues receiving alerts correct—yes or no? What steps are the Government taking to remedy this before pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and non-essential retail begin to open again?
I reassure the noble Baroness that the test and trace operation has developed remarkable capacity, and both the turnaround times for the testing and the effectiveness of the tracing have now emerged as being fantastic. The tracing of the Brazilian variant pays tribute to the effectiveness of the test and trace operation, as does Project Eagle, which has been mainly focused on the South African variant. We believe that the spread of the South African variant has been largely contained by the tracing of the Project Eagle team working closely with local authorities and infection control teams around the world. It shows what we can do with this remarkable resource.
With regard to borders, the “red list” and managed quarantine system has been stood up in an extremely effective way. The families in south Gloucestershire and Aberdeen isolated themselves, as they should have done, and the handling of their variant of concern has been professional. I am led to believe that progress is being made on tracking down our Brazilian friend, the one stray person with the disease.
In answer to the question of how someone could have a test without filling in the form, we believe that there are two ways in which that could happen. Someone could walk up to a testing site, have their test but not fill in the form properly, or they could have had the test sent to them in the post and returned it without filling in the correct form. There are lessons to be learned from both potential models, and we are communicating with those who provide tests to ensure that barcodes are put on all tests.
We have to run a risk-based analysis on cross-infection at airports and infection control within airports. We could close all airports—that could be one way of doing it—but, under the circumstances, I applaud both the airlines and the airports for putting in mitigation and hygiene measures which the CMO’s office believes will be effective.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about sequencing. We have stood up an enormous amount of new sequencing—30,000 samples a week is our current capacity—and we have dramatically reduced the time it takes to do sequencing. The biggest problem with that is transporting the samples around the country, and therefore we are looking at distributing sequencing capacity to the Lighthouse laboratories so that once a sample tests positive, it can be automatically taken to a plate to be sequenced at the same location. We believe that that could make a big impact.
One lesson from Project Eagle I share with the House is that door-to-door tracing is quite effective, but by far the most effective means of tracing has been intelligence-led tracing. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked about the check-in data, and this has been its power: it has allowed us to trace those who may have bumped into others in, for instance, areas of hospitality. It is not the objective of that check-in data to send out alerts to large numbers of people who may have been present in a location; it is more about empowering the forensic contact tracing necessary to track down potential connections.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about NHS plans. I will focus on one particular area and one of the lessons we have had from recent weeks. We have done an enormous amount to contain the spread of disease and we have seen—partly because of the lockdown, partly because of the wearing of masks, partly because of hygiene—a dramatic reduction in the amount of flu and gastroenteritis across the country. It is not an unrealistic ambition to hope that NHS resources could and should be focused on reducing contagious diseases across the piece and use the lessons from testing, hygiene and diagnostics generally to massively reduce the impact of contagious diseases. That will have huge benefits to the capacity of the NHS to combat sickness and ill health generally.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her kind remarks on the contribution of those in the back office of the NHS. I am sometimes admonished by those who say that there is simply too much white-collar, managerial wastage in the NHS. I do not accept that criticism, and the rollout of the vaccine shows the immense management muscularity at the NHS which is able to organise such a huge national programme with such efficiency and courtesy.
The noble Baroness asked about clinical trials. I celebrate the fact that the large amount of really encouraging evidence that we have had has vindicated the decision by the JCVI, the MHRA and the CMO to prioritise the first dose over the distribution of second doses and to bring in the 12-week gap. That was a wise, pragmatic and impactful decision and we thank those involved.
The noble Baroness is entirely right that the large take-up among older people will have a big impact on younger people. The most influential people in anyone’s life are the people whom they love and live with. I cannot think of a better way of marketing it to younger people than the older people whom they love and live with taking the vaccine.
I also pay tribute to Professor Paul Moss and the team at Octave who are working extremely hard on the impact of the vaccine on those with immune deficiency. As the noble Baroness alluded to, the work at the University of Birmingham is at pace. It has been going on for some months, and its impact is already being shared among professionals. I am not sure whether there is an official report planned, but I reassure her that the insight and intelligence from their work is being shared across the system.
Finally, I give enormous praise to all those currently working on our borders. The situation in other countries remains extremely concerning. Variants of concern are rising in many countries, and in Europe infection rates remain extremely high. We have put in place measures on our borders that have the capacity to protect us from these variants of concern and I am enormously grateful to all those concerned who have strengthened those positions.