UK Parliament / Open data

Health and Care Bill

Proceeding contribution from Baroness Chakrabarti (Labour) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 16 March 2022. It occurred during Debate on bills on Health and Care Bill.

I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke at this late hour, including the Minister. With respect, however, the numbers just do not stack up. I am so glad that the Government have now donated over 30 million shots, but these have almost all been AstraZeneca, which has lower efficacy against the now-dominant omicron variant. Moderna belatedly allocated a mere 110 million shots for a continent—Africa—with an estimated population of 1.3 billion people. Pfizer has allocated only 2% of its global supply to COVAX. We are just not getting enough shots to enough people, and so the variants develop.

I am grateful to everyone and I would happily keep speaking to the Minister, who is always courteous in his responses, but I really do think that it is time to test the opinion of the House.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

820 c391 

Session

2021-22

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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