Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:08 pm on 17 March 2020.

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Photo of Caroline Jones Caroline Jones UKIP 2:08, 17 March 2020

Thank you, First Minister. I'd like to stay with the idea of the issue of testing, if I may. The World Health Organization has said test, test, test, and I accept the rationale for not testing every case at this stage. But do you have a strategy for ramping up testing facilities in the coming months? This is a totally new virus of which we know very little, and the more data we can collect and collate, the more equipped we are to deal with it. Unfortunately, this virus is not going away anytime soon. We are still dealing with SARS nearly 20 years after it first emerged. A vaccine for COVID-19 would be another 18 months to two years away, so in the absence of a vaccine, we need to better understand the life-cycle of this virus, and for that we need accurate data on the numbers actually infected, the numbers infected who were asymptomatic, and sadly the mortality of the disease. Our future plans depend upon accurate testing. First Minister, is your Government planning on conducting wide-scale serologic testing once we're over the peak of this outbreak, and once the test being developed by Public Health England is available? Thank you.