Jonathan Ashworth comments on Dido Harding remarks at Science and Technology Committee

“Confirmation that 20,000 people a day sick with Covid are not isolating confirms our repeated warnings that without decent sick pay and support we won’t break chains of transmission.

“With worrying identification of the South African variant in the community and the E484K mutation in the infectious Kent variant it’s now more urgent than ever that this hole in our defences is fixed.”

Ends

Notes to editors

· Harding did not update the committee on the impact of the Test and Trace app on the pandemic. Data on this has still not been published.

· Harding claimed that Test and Trace is on course to reduce R by up to 0.8 in high infection areas – there has been no evidence or data published to support this.

· Harding stated that “None of us were able to predict coronavirus would mutate or variants would emerge” despite the fact that an Academy of Medical Royal Colleges report published last July flagged concerns that mutation potential could impact winter resurgence of the virus.