Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to ask the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to prioritise people with learning disabilities for covid-19 vaccinations.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) are the independent experts who advise the Government on which vaccines the United Kingdom should use and provide advice on prioritisation of a COVID-19 vaccine at a population level. For the first phase, the JCVI has advised that the vaccine be given to care home residents and staff, as well as frontline health and social care workers, then to the rest of the population in order of age and clinical risk factors which includes people who are clinically extremely vulnerable and/or have underlying health conditions. Adults with severe or profound learning difficulties are considered to be ‘at risk’ and adults with Down’s syndrome are included as priorities the first phase.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish the rationale for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation's decision not to prioritise people with learning disabilities in the roll out of the covid-19 vaccination programme.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) are an independent expert advisory committee which advise the Government on vaccination. The JCVI advised that the priority for the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccination programme should be the prevention of mortality from COVID-19. The JCVI have advised that adults with severe and profound learning difficulties should be prioritised for vaccine in the first phase of the programme.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to publish statistics at regular intervals on the number of people that have been treated in hospital and recovered from covid-19.
Answered by Edward Argar
Information on the number of people who have been admitted to hospital with COVID-19 is routinely published on the GOV.UK website at the following link:
https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/healthcare
In terms of the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19, the figures are difficult to quantify as people recover to different levels and in different settings. Not all recovery cases are picked up through data collections.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made in the creation of a register of defibrillators throughout the UK.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The NHS Long Term Plan recognises the importance of fast and effective action to help save the lives of people suffering a cardiac arrest.
The British Heart Foundation, in partnership with the Resuscitation Council UK (RCUK), the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives and the National Health Service, have set up the Circuit: the national defibrillator network. This is now live in five ambulance services: the West Midlands, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the East Midlands. The Circuit supports the ambulance services to identify the nearest defibrillator at the time of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. It will also lead to a national dataset which when combined with other relevant national datasets will inform national policy and support research.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that women with a family history of cervical cancer are given cervical cancer screening when they request it, regardless of (a) age and (b) time since their last smear test.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Having a family history of cervical cancer does not affect your chances of developing the disease; most cervical cancers are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). Regular cervical screening is one of the best ways to identify abnormal changes in the cells of the cervix at an early stage.
Evidence shows that using HPV primary screening within the NHS Cervical Screening Programme offers a more sensitive and effective way to let women know whether they have any risk of developing cervical cancer. If the individual tested does not have high risk HPV (high risk HPV is found in 99.7% of cervical cancers), her chances of developing a cancer within five years are very small.
The UK National Screening Committee recommends that anyone experiencing any unusual symptoms, such as abnormal bleeding, should contact their general practitioner who will then decide on the most appropriate next steps and diagnostic tests.