Covid-19 Update

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point: free the leisure centres! Many are being used as vaccination centres now, but, like her, I look forward to the day when they can be used for the purpose for which they were built—as leisure centres. It is important that, should we need a continued vaccination programme, for instance, over the summer and into the autumn, as seems likely, we will have to move to more permanent places or places that are free to be used as vaccination centres over that period. In fact, that has already started to happen. We have already started to move some of our testing and vaccination centres to more semi-permanent sites to free up the original sites that we started with, because we needed things to move incredibly quickly. That is an important consideration. Frankly, it is best done as close to the local area as possible, so it is right that I do not get involved in each individual one. I am absolutely certain that the NHS in Wolverhampton is far better placed to make those sorts of decisions than I am from this Dispatch Box, but I hope that it will keep my hon. Friend informed.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab) [V]]

I am afraid that “data not dates” clearly has not worked, because people have quite understandably just focused on the dates. The spring sunshine at the weekend meant that in lovely places such as Cambridge it was very busy. Are the Government now going to make a precautionary adjustment or, with hospital numbers still so high, take a chance and risk running the NHS into the ground?

[Matt Hancock]

No.