Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of extending eligibility for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to those who began employment after 31 October 2020.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
For all eligibility decisions under the CJRS, the Government must balance the need to support as many jobs as possible with the need to protect the scheme from fraud.
Under the CJRS extension, an employer can claim for employees who were employed and on their PAYE payroll on 30 October 2020. The employer must have made a PAYE Real Time Information (RTI) submission to HMRC between 20 March 2020 and 30 October 2020, notifying a payment of earnings for that employee. The use of RTI allows HMRC to verify claims in the most efficient and timely way, ensuring payments can be made quickly while reducing the risk of fraud. Without the use of RTI returns it would be difficult to verify claims without significant additional checks, which would delay payment for genuine claims.
The 30 October 2020 cut-off date allowed as many people as possible to be included by going right up to the day before the announcement, while balancing the risk of fraud that existed as soon as the scheme became public. Extending the cut-off date further would have significantly increased the risk of abuse because claims could not be confidently verified against the risk of fraud by using the data after this point.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is (1) the total number, and (2) the percentage, of NHS COVID-19 tests that have recorded (a) positive, (b) negative, and (c) inconclusive, results for England; and how do such figures compare with (i) Northern Ireland, (ii) Wales, and (iii) Scotland.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The information is not held in the format requested.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is (1) the total number, and (2) the percentage, of NHS COVID-19 tests that have recorded (a) positive, (b) negative, and (c) inconclusive, results for each region of England.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The information is not held in the format requested.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is (1) the total number, and (2) the percentage, of NHS COVID-19 tests that have recorded (a) positive, (b) negative, and (c) inconclusive, results for each local authority area in England.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The information is not held in the format requested.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to provide a breakdown (1) by health condition or treatment, and (2) by age group, of any estimate of the number of immunocompromised people who will not be able to benefit from a COVID-19 vaccine.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Department has worked closely at Ministerial and official level with our partners in the devolved administrations since the beginning of the outbreak, discussing a broad range of issues, in order to formulate an effective response.
Both primary immunodeficiency, the result of an inherited genetic defect, and secondary immunodeficiency, the result of disease or treatment and which may be temporary, have a variety of causes. Incidence, diagnosis or overall collective prevalence data that capture all possible types of immune deficiency, are not routinely collected or recorded centrally.
The Green Book lists the immunocompromised as part of the clinical risk groups over the age of 18 years old who should receive COVID-19 immunisation, as recommended by the latest advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), but notes that some immunocompromised patients may have a suboptimal immunological response to the vaccine. The JCVI has considered vaccination of household contacts of immunosuppressed individuals. However, at this time there is no data on the size of the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on transmission. Once enough evidence becomes available, the JCVI will consider options for a cocooning strategy for immunosuppressed individuals, including whether any specific vaccine is preferred for this population.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government which health conditions or treatments they categorised as resulting in a patient being immunocompromised when making their estimate of the total number of immunocompromised people who will not be able to benefit from a COVID-19 vaccine.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Department has worked closely at Ministerial and official level with our partners in the devolved administrations since the beginning of the outbreak, discussing a broad range of issues, in order to formulate an effective response.
Both primary immunodeficiency, the result of an inherited genetic defect, and secondary immunodeficiency, the result of disease or treatment and which may be temporary, have a variety of causes. Incidence, diagnosis or overall collective prevalence data that capture all possible types of immune deficiency, are not routinely collected or recorded centrally.
The Green Book lists the immunocompromised as part of the clinical risk groups over the age of 18 years old who should receive COVID-19 immunisation, as recommended by the latest advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), but notes that some immunocompromised patients may have a suboptimal immunological response to the vaccine. The JCVI has considered vaccination of household contacts of immunosuppressed individuals. However, at this time there is no data on the size of the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on transmission. Once enough evidence becomes available, the JCVI will consider options for a cocooning strategy for immunosuppressed individuals, including whether any specific vaccine is preferred for this population.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of immunocompromised people in England who will not be able to benefit from a COVID-19 vaccine; and what discussions they have had with the (1) Scottish, (2) Welsh, and (3) Northern Irish, Governments about the numbers of those people in those countries.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Department has worked closely at Ministerial and official level with our partners in the devolved administrations since the beginning of the outbreak, discussing a broad range of issues, in order to formulate an effective response.
Both primary immunodeficiency, the result of an inherited genetic defect, and secondary immunodeficiency, the result of disease or treatment and which may be temporary, have a variety of causes. Incidence, diagnosis or overall collective prevalence data that capture all possible types of immune deficiency, are not routinely collected or recorded centrally.
The Green Book lists the immunocompromised as part of the clinical risk groups over the age of 18 years old who should receive COVID-19 immunisation, as recommended by the latest advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), but notes that some immunocompromised patients may have a suboptimal immunological response to the vaccine. The JCVI has considered vaccination of household contacts of immunosuppressed individuals. However, at this time there is no data on the size of the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on transmission. Once enough evidence becomes available, the JCVI will consider options for a cocooning strategy for immunosuppressed individuals, including whether any specific vaccine is preferred for this population.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the proportion of people who have had a (1) positive, (2) negative, and (3) inconclusive, COVID-19 NHS test result after requesting a test because of (a) a cough, (b) a temperature, (c) a loss of taste, and (d) multiple symptoms.
Answered by Lord Bethell
We do not publish data in the format requested.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their latest estimate of the proportion of people who have had COVID-19 who have presented with (1) a cough, (2) a temperature, (3) a loss of taste, (4) any such symptoms, and (5) no symptoms.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates the percentages of people testing positive for COVID-19 who present with a range of symptoms in the community, which means that they necessarily exclude data from those testing positive in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings. It should be noted that the symptoms were self-reported, and not professionally diagnosed.
Around 5% of school-aged children presented with cough symptoms, whereas for those under 35 years old and those aged over 35 years old, the percentage for those presented with cough symptoms rose to between 10% and 15%.
In school-aged children, 15% of those who tested positive presented with fever symptoms and in adults, 15% and 20% did. The positivity rate in all age groups for those presenting with a loss of taste or smell is between 35% and 45%, however, there are wide confidence intervals within the date for school aged children. For all age groups, the rates of those reporting other symptoms is around 5%.
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency’s (SAGE) subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational (SPI-M-O), do not have one consensus estimate for asymptomatic case proportions. The ONS’ COVID-19 Infection Study has estimated that approximately 55% of those individuals who test positive do not record evidence of symptoms at or around the time of the test. This does not mean these individuals will not go on to develop symptoms or had symptoms previously.
Other SAGE evidence has shown that there is wide variation in the estimated proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic across different studies with the rapid review providing a pooled estimate, based on 22 studies, of 28% but with very wide confidence intervals.
Asked by: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to improve connectivity between the national COVID-19 contact tracing system and local outbreak control systems; and if they have any such plans, what are the timescales by which they expect to make any such changes.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Since its inception, NHS Test and Trace has worked closely with local authorities and local directors of public health.
Local Tracing Partnerships, first announced on 5 August, use local knowledge about communities and individuals to help ensure contact tracers reach the greatest possible proportion of people who have tested positive, both to help identify any support needs for them and other members of their households and to gather information about their recent contacts. As at 8 December, 275 Local Tracing Partnerships are in place, with more in implementation.
Local Tracing Partnerships involve local and national teams working together and sharing data as appropriate to ensure an integrated approach to contact tracing, support for self-isolation and preventing and managing local outbreaks.