Prime Minister's question asked in the House of Commons, by Jeremy Corbyn (Labour). It was answered on Wednesday, 18 March 2020 on behalf of the Prime Minister.
Engagements
- Question
-
The World Health Organisation said “test, test, test.” We should be testing on an industrial scale. When I met the Prime Minister on Monday evening, he assured me that 10,000 tests were going on per day. That is better than none, obviously, but it is nowhere near even the number of people working in the NHS and the care sector. It is a massive undertaking and I wish there was a greater sense of urgency from the Government in getting testing available for all staff.
NHS staff are obviously on the frontline, and many are scared because the guidance has been changed to say that they do not need to wear full protective equipment when caring for patients. A senior doctor has said:
“The rest of the world is providing staff with full protective gear and we are restricting it”.
This is a doctor saying, “I am scared.” We should not be scaring doctors and nurses. Is there or is there not a policy for them to have full protective equipment? I believe that that should be the case.
- Answer
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Quickly, on testing, I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that we are moving up to 25,000 tests a day.
On personal protective equipment for NHS staff, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the issue. It is obviously of huge concern to everyone that our NHS staff should feel that they are able to interact with patients with perfect security and protection, so there is a massive effort going on, comparable to the effort to build enough ventilators, to ensure that we have adequate supplies of PPE, not just now but throughout the outbreak.
Secondary information
- Type
- Oral question
- Reference
- 673 c996
- Session
- 2019-21
- Oral question type
- Supplementary
- Chamber / Committee
- House of Commons chamber
- Subjects
- Disease control NHS Protective clothing Staff Coronavirus
- Link
- View this Prime Minister's question on hansard.parliament.uk
Librarians' tools
- Timestamp
- 2024-04-26 21:17:06 +0100
- URI
- http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Commons/2020-03-18/20031825000121
- In Indexing
- http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Commons/2020-03-18/20031825000121
- In Solr
- https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Commons/2020-03-18/20031825000121