Hancock: don’t go to work with a runny nose

MATT HANCOCK has urged people not to go to work with a cold, as he announced Britain’s expanded testing capacity would be used for flu tests to stop workers “soldiering on”.

The Health Secretary said “the main lesson” about the country’s approach to testing was that in future, people should be routinely tested for all sorts of flulike symptoms.

He said the UK would “hold on” to the diagnostics capacity built during the pandemic to “change the British way of doing things”.

He told MPS: “Having built this global scale diagnostics capability … we must hold on to it, and afterwards we must use it, not just for coronavirus but for everything.”

“When in doubt, get a test doesn’t just refer to coronavirus – but refers to any illness that you might have.”

Mr Hancock said Britons should stop “soldiering on” and putting co-workers at risk.

He told a joint session of the health and social care committee and the science and technology committee: “Why in Britain do we think it’s acceptable to soldier on and go into work if you have flu symptoms or a runny nose, thus making your colleagues ill?

“If you have, in future, flu-like symptoms, you should get a test for it and find out what’s wrong with you, and if you need to stay at home to protect others, then you should stay at home.

“We are peculiarly unusual … in soldiering on and still going to work, and it kind of being the culture that ‘as long as you can get out of bed you still should get into work’. That should change.”

At the same hearing, the Health Secretary said distancing restrictions cannot be lifted until everyone over 50 has had the vaccine – or at least enough to have stopped the virus spreading.

He said he hoped the most damaging restrictions can be lifted by Easter. But this depended on everyone in the first 10 groups of the vaccine priority list – meaning everyone over 50 – having been offered the jab by then.

Mr Hancock said there would be a shift to an emphasis on “personal responsibility” rather than social distancing once the vaccines have reached the most vulnerable people.

Mr Hancock also said he has asked the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to reconsider giving higher priority for vaccines to people with learning disabilities. It comes after a report showed a higher risk of Covid19 deaths among such groups.

Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, said Mr Hancock over-ruled officials in insisting the UK order an extra 70 million Astrazeneca jabs, instead of 30 million. He told LBC radio that the decision to buy the jab in such large quantities was taken by the Health Secretary – against the advice of officials.

Whitehall sources said: “Initially the government was looking at 30 million doses but ministers worked to secure a much bigger supply.”