Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:20 pm on 10 March 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:20, 10 March 2020

Llywydd, on the first point, I don't think there is a useable mechanism by which any Government can track people returning to this country from many parts of the world, not just north Italy, other than through the actions that the UK Government has put in place through the ports and airports. We continue to work at a Welsh level where we have some shared responsibility in that regard.

The advice to people who have returned from other parts of the world where coronavirus is in circulation is very clear: they should not simply turn up at a GP surgery or at an accident and emergency service, they should phone first, they should get advice. The Member, I know, is aware that, in Wales, we have had a particular emphasis on home testing for people. We take the test to the person, so that they don't run the risk of coming into contact with people who could then be infected by them.

The six cases that we have identified in Wales so far are, we believe, people who have been in contact with others from another part of the world. We don't think we have, at this point, community spread in Wales, but the advice is that that is a matter of time. So, while we remain in the containment phase, that will develop into a delay set of actions at the right time.

And that takes me to the second point that Adam Price has raised, and it's the point I made in answer to Paul Davies about speed. The advice we were getting yesterday, Llywydd, was that timing of actions is really important. If we move, for example, today, to a regime in which anybody who had the first signs of a cold were asked to self-isolate, it's almost certain that what they would be self-isolating with would be a cold, because colds are in circulation, and coronavirus is not. So, they would stay home for seven days, with all the inconvenience that that causes, for no very good purpose. If, in 10 days' time, coronavirus were to be circulating and we asked them to do it again, the behavioural modelling tells us that people would be more reluctant to do it a second time, having gone through it all once and found that it wasn't serving a useful purpose.

So, while I think there's every right for parliamentarians to challenge the Government, to ask those questions, to be critical where they think criticism is justified, we will work on the basis of the best evidence that we have and, at the moment, we think that the sequencing of the actions that we are likely to have to ask of Welsh citizens is at the right point at this moment, and that we will time any further things we ask of them so that those asks happen at the point where those actions would have the biggest effect in slowing down the spread of the virus.