2021 UK Budget Breakdown: COVID-19 Relief
On the 3rd of March, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak announced the government’s 2021 budget. This budget is comprised of five key components: Economic recovery, protecting jobs and livelihoods, strengthening the public finances, COVID-19 relief and devolved nations. Over the coming days, we will be looking at each of these components individually. This post will look at the budgets plan for COVID-19 relief
COVID-19 Relief Policies
In an attempt to minimise the risk of COVID-19 variants casing further damage not only to the economy, but to society at large, these are the key economic policies that have been laid out by the chancellor:
· An extra £1.65billion cash injection to make sure that the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in England continues to be successful.
o Having a smooth vaccination rollout means that public sector services will be able to reopen sooner, allowing for the population to come out of lockdown and restriction measures without the fear of transmission.
· £28million to increase UK Capacity for vaccine testing:
o This money will basically go towards clinical trial and vaccine testing so that experts can more readily obtain samples for new COVID-19 variants. With these samples, experts can make sure that the vaccines being produced are as effective as possible against various strains.
· Further £5million investment in clinical-scale mRNA:
o This means that the money will be invested to help create a ‘library’ of what we can call ‘standby’ vaccines. The idea is that these can be used various COVID-19 variants so that in the case of a new outbreak, health services can respond rapidly in distributing these vaccines to help minimise further risk of transmission/infection from disease.
So, what is the impact on young people?
The more effective these economic COVID-19 relief policies are, the safer not only young people, but the entire population will be. With effective COVID-19 measures in place, the idea is that we won’t have to re-live the past year we have had again. This means that school, university and work closures won’t have to be the first port of call if and when new outbreaks of COVID-19 emerge.
Tatiana Kasujja, University of Cambridge Campus Ambassador