Covid-19: Vaccinations - Statement

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 1:47 pm on 13 January 2021.

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Photo of Lord Bethell Lord Bethell The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care 1:47, 13 January 2021

My Lords, I completely hear my noble friend’s encouragement, and her advocacy on behalf of business and a return to normal is heard loud and clear. The deployment is happening literally as quickly as we can possibly make it. I suggest to her that even NHS workers have to sleep, they have families, and it is not possible to run operations through the night on a mass scale. You cannot force people to turn up for a vaccine. I am not sure that the idea that millions of people will turn up at 4 o’clock in the morning for a vaccine is entirely realistic. However, my noble friend’s point about scale and whether we can move faster and turn around the situation more quickly is extremely well made. I reassure her that we are doing everything we possibly can.