Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason his Department's guidance does not require people who self-isolate for 14 days to take a covid-19 test once that period has concluded.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Decisions on the need to take COVID-19 tests are based on scientific evidence, the stage of the epidemic and the expert clinical judgement of the United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers. Current evidence has not identified a need to take a COVID-19 test once a self-isolation period has concluded. We constantly review the data and make changes when we are confident it is appropriate to do so.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the weekly data is of covid-19 infection from October 2020 to date, by ethnicity.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Public Health England publishes the weekly incidence of COVID-19 cases by ethnicity in the weekly National Flu and COVID-19 Surveillance report, which is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the weekly data is on deaths as a result of covid-19 from October 2020 to date.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Public Health England (PHE) reports weekly numbers of deaths in England in people with a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 test, who died within 28 days of the first positive specimen date. This data is reported in the weekly National Flu and COVID-19 Surveillance report, which is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports
PHE also reports the weekly proportion of these deaths by ethnic group. This is available in the weekly surveillance reports.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the weekly data is on deaths as a result of covid-19 from October 2020 to date, by ethnicity.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Public Health England (PHE) reports weekly numbers of deaths in England in people with a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 test, who died within 28 days of the first positive specimen date. This data is reported in the weekly National Flu and COVID-19 Surveillance report, which is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports
PHE also reports the weekly proportion of these deaths by ethnic group. This is available in the weekly surveillance reports.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on what date covid-19 tests were made available for people living in (a) retirement complexes and (b) sheltered accommodation; when rapid flow tests will be made to people living in those types of accommodation; and for what reasons people living in those accommodations have not been provided with the same access to testing as people living in care homes.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Staff or residents within retirement complexes and sheltered accommodation who are symptomatic are eligible for testing through the self-referral portal. We are expanding our testing capacity all the time and we now have capacity to test over 500,000 people a day. We have prioritised people who are most at risk from the effects of Covid-19, and we will continue to review our social care testing strategy for adult social care in light of the latest evidence and available capacity.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps have been taken to assess the effectiveness of (a) inhaled treatment for covid-19 and (b) trails carried out by Synairgen plc in Bradford Royal Infirmary and other hospitals.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has established a single United Kingdom-wide process which labels COVID-19 research with the most potential with Urgent Public Health (UPH) status. Any trials evaluating the effectiveness of inhaled treatments are subject to this same process.
National and international trials are monitored by the RAPID-C19 initiative, which aims to get treatments for COVID-19 to National Health Service patients quickly and safely. This process begins with scanning all trials for COVID-19 treatments. Any promising drugs will be identified for further review.
Synairgen have been requested to submit a formal submission to UK-CTAP and NIHR UPH for review, where the inhaled interferon beta-1, SGN001 will be reviewed by a panel of independent experts to assess if it will be suitable to be incorporated into the RECOVERY+ trial or an independent trial, for Phase III.
UK-CTAP is an independent COVID-19 Therapeutics Advisory Panel, which will advise on what treatments should be proposed for testing through RECOVERY+. As with all other therapeutic compounds in trial, progress of the effectiveness will continue to be monitored by the Chief Medical Officer, NIHR UPH and RAPID C-19.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many staff in his Department reported their religion as Islam in the latest period for which figures are available; what the reported ethnicity of those staff was; and how many of those staff were employed at each grade.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
As part of our commitment to achieving a workforce representative of the society we serve and providing equality of opportunity, we monitor representation of all protected characteristics across the department. Providing diversity information relies on employees voluntarily completing their diversity information on our electronic Human Resources system and we continue to encourage staff to complete their self-declaration.
The declaration rate for faith and belief within the Department is 58%, which is 937 members of Departmental staff as of 23 October 2019 and therefore, it should be noted that the information provided below refers only to staff who have completed their self-declaration. This information refers only to Departmental staff and does not include staff from our executive agencies or arm’s length bodies.
The number of Departmental staff who have declared their faith and belief as Muslim, which we have grouped into grades to ensure that we do not disclose personally identifiable information, are:
- Administrative Officer – Grade 7 – 37; and
- Senior Civil Servant – less than five.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the levels of stock held by wholesalers of pharmaceutical, medical and healthcare products; and whether there have been (a) shortages and (b) price increases in the last six months.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
We have not seen any evidence that suggests there has been any changes to the volume of medicine shortages or price changes as a result of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. Our number one priority is to ensure the continued supply of medicines which is why we are working closely with industry and partners in the health system to manage the impact of EU exit.
The Department has well established processes to manage and mitigate the small number of business as usual supply problems that may arise at any one time due to manufacturing or distribution issues and this has always been the case. We work closely with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), NHS England and the pharmaceutical industry to prevent medicine shortages, minimise the risks to patients and take appropriate action when shortages do occur.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of shortages of medicines held by (a) pharmacies and (b) suppliers in the last six months; and what effect the UK leaving the EU has had on the (i) price and (ii) availability of medicines in the UK.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
We have not seen any evidence that suggests there has been any changes to the volume of medicine shortages or price changes as a result of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. Our number one priority is to ensure the continued supply of medicines which is why we are working closely with industry and partners in the health system to manage the impact of EU exit.
The Department has well established processes to manage and mitigate the small number of business as usual supply problems that may arise at any one time due to manufacturing or distribution issues and this has always been the case. We work closely with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), NHS England and the pharmaceutical industry to prevent medicine shortages, minimise the risks to patients and take appropriate action when shortages do occur.