The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 18 March.
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the support that we are giving to the NHS and social care to help recover from the pandemic.
Before turning to that, I want to update the House on vaccine supply and the rollout, and set out the facts, given some of the speculation that we have seen overnight.
Let me set out the position absolutely straightforwardly. Throughout the vaccination programme, the pace of rollout has always been determined by the availability of supply. As I have said in the House many times, supply is the rate-limiting factor. The process of manufacturing vaccines is complicated and subject to unpredictability. Because we get supplies out into the field so fast, and run a highly lean delivery system, changes in future supply schedules impact on the weekly availability of vaccine. This has been true throughout. We make public commitments to the goals we can reach according to our best estimates of future supply. That supply goes up and down. We are currently, right now, in the middle of some bumper weeks of supply.
We have now reached the milestone of 25 million vaccinations, within the first 100 days of rollout, and we have therefore been able to open up invitations to all people aged 50 and above. Yesterday, for example, we delivered over half a million vaccines, and we will do so again today. In April, supply is tighter than it is this month, and we have a huge number of second doses to deliver. During April, around 12 million people, including many colleagues in this House, will receive their second dose. These second doses cannot be delayed, as they have to be delivered within 12 weeks of the first dose. In the last week, we have had a batch of 1.7 million doses delayed because of the need to re-test its stability. Events like this are to be expected in a manufacturing endeavour of this complexity, and this shows the rigour of our safety checks.
We also have a delay in a scheduled arrival from the Serum Institute of India. I want to put on the record my gratitude to the Serum Institute of India for the incredible work that it is doing producing vaccine, not just for us in the UK but for the whole world. Its technology and its capability, which has been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, is remarkable. The Serum Institute of India is producing a billion doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine this year. It truly is a partnership that we can be proud of. I also want to put on the record my thanks to both AstraZeneca and Pfizer, who have been remarkable partners in this historic endeavour.
We have committed to targets, it is vital to say, to offer the vaccine to everyone aged 50 and over by 15 April and to all adults by the end of July. I can confirm that we are on track to meet both those targets. I also want to clear up some rumours that have been circulating and give people reassurance. There will be no weeks in April with no first doses. There will be no cancelled appointments as a result of supply issues. Second doses will go ahead as planned.
Most importantly, the vaccine data published yesterday show the life-saving impact of this vaccine. It is not just that the vaccines are safe; it is that they make you safe. You are much safer having had one. Shortly, the MHRA will be saying more on this matter, which of course it keeps under constant review.
I know the House will also want to hear some good news from Gibraltar. Throughout the crisis, we have provided Gibraltar with personal protective equipment, testing and a sovereign guarantee for its Covid spending. We have also provided Gibraltar with vaccines, as we have all other British Overseas Territories. I am delighted to be able to tell the House that yesterday Gibraltar became the first nation in the world to complete its entire adult vaccination programme. I want to pay tribute to all Gibraltarians for their fortitude during this crisis, and the kind words of Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, who said yesterday:
‘The United Kingdom has played a blinder on vaccinations and we have been among the beneficiaries in the British family of nations.’
I agree.
The vaccination programme has been a success thanks to a team spirit across the British family of nations. It has not always been easy; of course there are challenges thrown at us in what is the biggest civilian undertaking in history, which affects every single one of us. The whole House pays tribute to those who have helped make it happen, including Emily Lawson, Kate Bingham, Maddy McTernan, Ruth Todd, Nikki Kanani, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, Professor Chris Whitty, Sir Patrick Vallance, Wei Shen Lim, Sarah Gilbert, Andy Pollard, Pascal Soriot, my officials in the department, colleagues across the House, and so many others who have made this a success.
With 25 million people vaccinated and a clear road map out of lockdown, we are taking careful steps out of this pandemic. Now, there are 7,218 people in hospital with Covid across the UK, down from a peak of almost 40,000 just seven weeks ago, the rate of hospitalisations has halved in just the past 16 days and, thankfully, the rate at which people are dying has fallen by a third in the last week.
As a result, I can tell the House that we are, from today, writing to all clinically extremely vulnerable people to let them know that shielding will come to an end on 31 March. I thank all those who have shown such fortitude, and all those who have done so much to look after the most vulnerable. The shielding programme truly has been Britain at its best—pulling together to help those most in need.
I know that colleagues in the NHS and social care are beginning, cautiously, to look to the recovery ahead. I know that everyone in this House is proud of the life-saving work we have seen in hospitals across the country. Yet we also know that our battles against covid-19 have meant that there are things that we have not been able to do, such as routine treatments and operations. The challenges of Covid are still with us. We must continue to treat patients with the disease and bolster our vital mission of infection control, while also laying the groundwork for a recovery that gets us back to where we need to be.
We have backed the NHS at every point in this pandemic so that it can treat patients, stay safe and save lives, and I am delighted to inform the House that we are backing it again today with a further £6.6 billion of funding for the first half of this coming financial year. This money is in addition to the £3 billion committed at the spending review last November to help the NHS meet the additional costs of Covid while, critically, starting the work on the elective recovery ahead.
Due to the pandemic, the waiting list for elective treatment in January was almost 4.6 million, and 304,000 people are waiting more than a year for an operation or diagnostic. Before the pandemic, we had reduced the number of 52-week waits—people waiting more than a year—from 20,000 in 2010 to 1,600. We were in fact on track to get that number to zero before the pandemic hit. This backlog of elective work is an inevitable consequence of the pandemic, and I know that NHS colleagues are as determined as I am to put it right.
We are also putting £594 million towards safe hospital discharge. Over the last year, the NHS’s existing discharge programme freed up over 6,000 beds and, with them, the valuable time of 11,000 NHS staff. We can be grateful that we are seeing so many people leave hospital and that our discharge programme has shown the way forward, ensuring that people can get the very best of care outside of our hospitals, helping them off the wards and into the right settings, with the right support at the right time.