Oldham MP McMahon urges Government to “help us get ahead of any new strains”

Oldham West and Royton MP Jim McMahon

Oldham West and Royton MP Jim McMahon has written to the Health Secretary, demanding more resources for Oldham’s public health teams to ensure our town is able to combat any new emerging strains of Covid-19.

Mr McMahon also wants to ensure that the vaccination programme reaches all parts of the population in Oldham, as take-up remains lower amongst Pakistani and Black African communities.

In his letter to Matt Hancock, the Oldham MP highlights that as of Monday, May 24, the take-up amongst Cohorts 1-4, which is all care home residents and carers, all those over 70 years of age, and everybody in Oldham considered to be clinically extremely vulnerable, stood at 94% White British, 91% for the Indian community, 82% for those of a British-Bangladeshi background, and those with Black British-Caribbean heritage showing rates of 86%, compared to 71% of the British-Pakistani community and 64% amongst the Black British-African community.

The MP encourages Government to provide resources for Oldham Council and the public health team to learn lessons from places like Leicester where they have focused on empowering community leaders in their vaccination rollout.

The Shadow Transport Secretary also warns that unless the Government improves its Covid-19 border strategy, the risk of new strains gaining ground is increased.

Mr McMahon said: “In some of our communities in Oldham vaccination take-up is not where we need it to be, especially when compared to others.

"We now need to get on with working with these communities and community leaders to get to the bottom of why that is - we must work together to improve the situation without demonisation.

“Surge vaccination should absolutely be a priority, but we also need resources to ensure that those who have not yet been vaccinated are encouraged to do so, and work must be done to reassure anyone who has concerns about the safety and importance of getting vaccinated to protect the whole community.

“We cannot be complacent and find ourselves in a situation where we see more devastating social and economic restrictions placed on our town again because the resources to prevent that and move us in the right direction were not forthcoming.

“I know that last year when I joined teams from the Council out on the streets of Oldham, going door-to-door with testing teams, the community responded positively.

"My instinct says that we may require a similar street level effort, to get ahead of any new strains.”

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