Strengthening the health protection at the border of England

News Desk: Statement by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on the new system of health measures at the border that will come into force on Monday 15 February.

Mr Speaker, with permission, I’d like to make a statement on new measures to keep this country safe from coronavirus.

Thanks to our collective efforts, we’re turning a corner.

Cases of coronavirus have fallen 47% in the last 2 weeks, and they’re falling in all parts of the UK.

But we’re not there yet. Hospitalisations are falling, but there are still many more people in hospital than at the April or November peaks, and the number of deaths, whilst falling, is still far too high.

Our vaccination programme is growing every day.

We’ve now protected over 12.2 million people – almost 1 in 4 adults in the United Kingdom, including:

• 91.4% of people aged 80 and above
• 95.9% of those aged between 75 and 79
• 77.2% of those aged between 70 and 74, who were the most recent group to have been invited

And we’ve also vaccinated 93.5% of eligible care home residents.

We’ve made such progress in protecting the most vulnerable that we’re now asking people who live in England, who are aged 70 and over, and haven’t yet had an appointment to come forward and contact the NHS.

And you can do that by going online to NHS.UK or dialling 119, contacting your local GP practice.

So we can make sure that we reach the remaining people in these groups even as we expand the offer of a vaccine to younger ages.

Mr Speaker, these are huge steps forward for us all.

And we must protect this hard-fought progress, by making sure we stay vigilant and secure the nation against new variants of coronavirus that put at the risk the great advances we’ve made.