Covid 19: Winter Plan

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am very happy to again pay tribute, as the noble Baroness, the noble Lord and others have done, to the fantastic scientists who have worked on these vaccines and indeed who work across universities. I very much hope that the exciting developments we have seen at Oxford and other universities will encourage young people to think about this work as a career. It is incredibly impressive and challenging work, and I hope that some of the coverage and interest in it will encourage more people to think about it as a career, ensuring that we continue to have fantastic scientists working in this country.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB) [V]]

My Lords, we rejoice at the wonderful news of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. However, in the meantime, does the noble Baroness agree that a six-week mass, rapid and affordable lateral flow antigen testing surge could be a game-changer? Now that these tests will be manufactured in the UK at very low cost—perhaps even as low as £3—do the Government agree that they should be freely distributed to enable as much of the population as possible to self-test regularly? This would reduce the R rate rapidly, within weeks, and, in the words of the Prime Minister, would be the boxing glove that truly pummels the virus.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord, and that is exactly why we are offering all local authorities in tier 3 areas the opportunity to participate in the sort of programme that he has suggested. It will be called the kick out Covid testing challenge and will build on the positive results from the Liverpool pilot.