Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many refugees from Afghanistan have been registered with the NHS; and how many have been provided with access to (1) a GP, and (2) maternal, (3) dental, and (4) mental health, services, within the past year.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
We do not hold the data in the format requested. Clinical systems do not record whether individuals have been resettled through an Afghan resettlement scheme.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to establish regional telephone hotlines for the public to use to ask questions related to COVID-19 vaccines.
Answered by Lord Bethell
There are no plans to establish regional telephone hotlines.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to optimise vaccination protocols for older adults.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Government’s ‘Coronavirus: action plan: A guide to what you can expect across the UK’ has stated that everyone should ensure themselves and their families vaccinations are up to date, as this will help to reduce any pressure on the National Health Service from vaccine preventable diseases.
In the interest of optimising vaccination protocols, Public Health England recently worked with NHS England and NHS Improvement to generate national news coverage to inform people that the NHS immunisations are still available. Resources such as posters have been circulated across the health system to help disseminate this message.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support studies which (1) include non-hospitalised individuals, and (2) are of sufficient scale to be valid, to determine the ages at which critical health changes in response to COVID-19 occur.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Department, through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and UK Research and Innovation, have launched a £20 million joint research call to fund ambitious and comprehensive research to understand and address the longer term physical and mental health effects of COVID-19 in non-hospitalised individuals. The aim is to support two or three large consortia and a number of extensions to existing studies. These studies will be robust and of sufficient scale to include analysis of age and other factors.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support studies (1) in a community setting, and (2) that extend into the convalescent period, to establish factors that affect the duration of effective immunity to COVID-19.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are jointly funding the United Kingdom Coronavirus Immunology Consortium with £6.5 million, which will address key research themes on immunity to COVID-19 including cross reactivity with seasonal coronaviruses.
Other relevant NIHR-UKRI funded studies include the STORY study to understand the severity of COVID-19 disease in children and evaluate antibody responses; Virus Watch looking at household transmission; and the INSTINCT study investigating the epidemiology and immunology of COVID-19 infection in households.
The NIHR’s Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections is also looking at the size and longevity of the immune response.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support studies investigating the effect of (1) co-infection, and (2) vaccination against other pathogens, on COVID-19 immunity.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are jointly funding the United Kingdom Coronavirus Immunology Consortium with £6.5 million, which will address key research themes on immunity to COVID-19 including cross reactivity with seasonal coronaviruses.
Other relevant NIHR-UKRI funded studies include the STORY study to understand the severity of COVID-19 disease in children and evaluate antibody responses; Virus Watch looking at household transmission; and the INSTINCT study investigating the epidemiology and immunology of COVID-19 infection in households.
The NIHR’s Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections is also looking at the size and longevity of the immune response.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the level of demand for flu jabs, and (2) reports that pharmacies and GPs have not had sufficient stock to meet demand; and what steps they are taking to ensure that pharmacies and GPs are supplied with enough vaccines to meet community need.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Overall, there are sufficient vaccine for up to 30 million people to be vaccinated in England this winter. We have seen huge early demand for vaccinations and latest figures show that uptake is higher for all cohorts compared to last year.
General practitioners, community pharmacies, and trusts are directly responsible for ordering flu vaccine from suppliers which are used to deliver the national flu programme to adults, with deliveries phased through the season.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their announcement on 24 July that the “most comprehensive flu programme in UK history will be rolled out this winter”, what steps they took to ensure that a supply of flu vaccines would be available; and what assessment they have made of the reported shortage of such vaccines for autumn 2020.
Answered by Lord Bethell
There is no national shortage of the flu vaccine. We have sufficient vaccine for up to 30 million people to be vaccinated in England this winter.
General practitioners and pharmacists are directly responsible for ordering flu vaccine from suppliers which are used to deliver the national flu programme to adults, with deliveries phased through the season.
In addition, the Department has procured additional doses of seasonal flu vaccine to ensure more flu vaccines are available from November.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to conduct universal testing for COVID-19 at airports in England.
Answered by Lord Bethell
On 12 March 2020 the Prime Minister announced that the COVID-19 response was moving from the contain to delay phase. This phase has been initiated as there is now community transmission of the virus in the United Kingdom, i.e. transmission not directly related to travel; this has made interventions in ports of less relative importance. With the shift to the delay phase and commensurate policy changes, the Public Health England approach is that testing capacity should not be focused on airports.