Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:59 pm on 17 March 2020.
Well, I thank Paul Davies. I want to give him the number of critical care beds that we have here in Wales, but I want to make sure I give it to him accurately. In my mind, the figure is 136, but I'll confirm that with him if I've not remembered that correctly. The health service already has, Llywydd, surge capacity, as it's called, for intensive care, to double that number of beds. That's part of the routine planning of the health service, but we know that even if you double the number we have, it will not meet the likely level of requirement. So, of course discussions are going on with our intensive care colleagues about alternative ways in which different sorts of decisions can be made to treat people who need that level of intervention. In other parts of the hospital, part of the reason for cancelling routine operations is that some of the equipment that you would need is often located in theatres and can be put to use in that way. But in the way that I think Paul Davies was suggesting, it's a cascade, really. In order to create more capacity at the most intense end, you have to free capacity up all through the system.
I'm very grateful to our colleagues in local government in Wales, who are doing some very important work to be able to free up capacity in the care home sector, so the people who are in hospital beds in Wales today, ready to leave—there's no medical reason for them to be there—there will be places for those people to go, so we create capacity in that way too. So, right through the system, we need to find ways of moving people down the hierarchy of intervention in order to create capacity at the place where it may be most needed for those with the most intense conditions.