Public Health

Yes, I can confirm that to my right hon. Friend. First, he is absolutely right to make that point. Of course it is not just about individuals entering hospital but about how many days they are likely to stay in hospital. I believe that for the delta variant an individual stays, on average, about nine days in hospital. If that was cut to five or six days, of course it would help with capacity. First, we cannot assume that, because what we are seeing in terms of the impact in South Africa is that hospitalisations there are rising rapidly; there are hundreds of people in intensive care units and on ventilators. It is hard to completely read that across, given that the average age of the South African population is about 27. I hope he would agree that, as with the point I just made on severity, even if the hospital stay is half of what it is at the moment, the rate at which this thing is growing—and if it continues to grow at that rate—means that that benefit could be cancelled out in two days.