Covid-19 Update

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am touched by the testimony of the noble Baroness. I pay tribute to the work of National Voices, which has presented an extremely thoughtful and helpful guide and presented the testimony of those who have been under the extremely harsh regimes of shielding. She is entirely right that those who have had to go into the most extreme forms of lockdown depend the most on government guidelines. Those guidelines can be complex, and people can feel confused or lonely and separated because of their status. We have invested a huge amount in local authorities and in charities specifically to reach those groups. It is through that kind of civic and public service support that we can work with those people. It is not properly the role of central government to have individual communications with those who are shielding at home. We rely on our partners, and we have provided an enormous amount of resources to ensure they can do that job properly.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, if I was diagnosed with coronavirus today and subsequently recovered or showed no symptoms over the next couple of weeks, in 27 days I might get knocked over by a bus and killed, and that would be registered as a Covid-related death. My question to my noble friend is this: why are we including all these deaths that are nothing to do with Covid in the overall statistics that we publish every day?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, if my noble friend caught Covid today and recovered in two weeks’ time, I would personally celebrate that enormously, as I am sure would others in the Chamber. He is right that we have existing protocols for identifying cause of death, and we approach Covid in exactly the same way we do all other causes of death. This is to help our demographic analysis. Of course, the example that he gives—which is entirely correct—is an extreme example, but it is helpful for us to understand, when we are doing retrospective analysis, who has been touched by Covid in order to explain at a later date where the causes of those deaths may have come from. A death that is not apparently from Covid today may in future have a clearer connection.