Covid-19 Update

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this very important Statement. Many people are concerned about taking the booster because they do not know what the result will be of mixing vaccines such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca. Nobody seems able to give advice. It is very worrying. GP surgeries just do not want to know. What can the Minister do about this? Some of these people are elderly, but there are also young people. How can one advise them? They want to speak to a human being, not just a repeated voice which does not answer their questions. Some of these people are pregnant. The ones I talk to are in a rural area; I do my best to tell them how important it is to have a vaccine, but they just want an official voice. I hope the Minister can give some advice.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. As far as I am aware, the places administering the booster should be able to give that advice. For example, when I walked in for my booster, they asked which vaccines I had previously had and said that the half-dose I had was sufficient. When I asked about my children, they told me which vaccine was more appropriate for that age group, depending on which vaccine they had. If that advice is not available at the place of vaccination, please let me know. I was not aware of that and I promise that I can look into it.

While I am here, I realise that I did not answer the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about the R number. It is currently at 0.9 to 1.1; the latest growth rate range for England is minus 1% to plus 1% per day. As the omicron data comes in, that may well increase, but we have looked at all these measures and are being as precautious as we can in balancing everything up.

In response to the earlier question about the pass—I apologise for the long answer—I have just been told that the NHS has tweeted:

“We are aware of an issue affecting access to the NHS COVID Pass on the NHS App and website. We are investigating this as a priority and will update as soon as we can”.


Clearly, the NHS has been listening to this debate and discussion, and I thank the noble Baroness for raising that. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that that tweet shows the effectiveness of having this debate, so that we can share as much information with the public as possible. I repeat this request: if any noble Lords are aware of any particular problems with the rollout, information et cetera, please let me know and I will investigate as quickly as I can.