BOURNEMOUTH MP Tobias Ellwood has called on the government to create a dedicated department to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Ellwood said the current cabinet structure was "slow and siloed" to deal with the challenges the country faced.

The defence select committee chairman said he continued to be concerned by the government's crisis management capabilities as Boris Johnson set an ambitious target of offering booster vaccine jabs to all adults by the end of the year.

Mr Ellwood, who represents Bournemouth East, also said there was a need to move vaccine delivery from the NHS so its staff could tackle the challenges facing hospitals up and down the country.

"We created a Department for Brexit, a Department for Climate Change, why not have one for tackling Covid - a dedicated secretary of state to provide that infrastructure and resource, which is needed," he told the Daily Echo.

"Every business and charity has a fire evacuation officer. Why not have someone trained to be a vaccinator in every office? It took me a month to get up to speed.

"Every time a further jab is required someone in each business can deliver the vaccinations. You could still have the clinics and other sites for people to walk in and use should they need it.

"That is the scale we require. We need to develop the capability and train the work force, which is separate to our current health structure."

He said at present the NHS is trying to deal with hospital pressures as well as the "additional burden" of tackling Covid and delivering vaccines. Mr Ellwood said: "That is why people are not getting the treatment they need for non-Covid issues because it is all the same people being asked to deliver it."

'This is not going to go away'

The Conservative MP, who volunteered at vaccine centres over the past year, said he "very much welcomed" the Prime Minister's initiative to ramp up the booster programme, but said it should have happened months ago.

"This won't be the last Greek letter associated with Covid," he said. "We will require fourth, fifth and sixth jabs.

"This isn't about one final push and we are out of the woods. While less than half the world's population is vaccinated, there's scope for another mutation and another challenge."

Mr Ellwood said a separate capability to deliver jabs away from the work of the NHS needed to be created so hospital treatments and other health care could continue with less disruption.

He said mechanisms to ramp up Covid jab sites in Dorset were starting to move.

"It was a shame that the BIC was stood down (as a vaccine hub) and in a sense that underlines my concerns. We saw this as get through the Delta variant and we are out of the woods, but that is not the case at all," he added.

"We need to have the capability to ratchet it up and move into another gear when the situation in the pandemic justifies."

Split on new proposed measures

Discussing votes on new Covid measures, which are due to take place tomorrow in the House of Commons, Mr Ellwood said he supported the legislation to extend the use of face coverings and mandatory vaccinations for NHS staff in some settings, however, he could not support the vaccine passport plans.

He said he had spoken to hospitality businesses who had concerns on enforcing the passports – a negative lateral flow test or proof of two Covid vaccine doses to enter large venues.

The former defence minister said it had been shown two jabs was not enough to prevent symptomatic Omicron variant cases.