Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:10 pm on 17 March 2020.
Now, I obviously listened to you very carefully during First Minister's questions. I wanted to first of all say that I absolutely support all of the actions that you've taken here, from suggesting that 70-year-olds must stay at home for self-isolation; what we need to do to keep ourselves safe; and how we look after people who've got compromised immune systems and are recovering from very difficult diseases. We are with you on that, and I think that's excellent.
But, I do want to just ask you a couple of other questions to do with the whole issue of how we proceed with tackling COVID-19. I can't not ask you again about the testing regime. I heard very clearly, and actually it chimed with me very strongly, your comment about, 'Our scientific evidence, our CSAs and our CMOs giving us the evidence that is the rock on which we must base all of our decisions, and if we shift that rock around, then we are in a very, very difficult state'. So, I'm not asking you to do that, but what I am asking you to do is perhaps tell us how you are currently evaluating, constantly, the current decision not to test greater numbers of the population. I think it's because I'm very interested in examples of places such as South Korea that have managed to drop from almost 1,000 cases a day to fewer than 100 cases a day. Their absolute ethos is that testing centrally led to early detection, it minimised spread and it quickly treated those with the virus. So, I appreciate that all of the home Governments are united that this is the way we go forward, but I would just like to know how you're looking at that and how you're evaluating that performance.
I'm also very interested in the testing issue, because I wondered whether you have any information at all about the viability of home testing kits. The reason, again, I ask that is because if we're testing our healthcare professionals, we have to retest them, retest them and retest them, because they might be well on Monday, but if they're living with someone who's got COVID-19, they might not be well on Wednesday or Friday.
Secondly, we have a very elderly population. We have a lot of people who need extra support at home. We have a lot of isolated people who will find it very difficult to get out if buses run less and if transport happens less, and if we could actually use all of these great voluntary groups that are putting themselves together—people like us—to go out and help, it would be so useful if we could be tested, because then we could, actually—even if we don't do the practical stuff of changing a dressing in someone's home, actually what we can do is see an older person and talk to them for half an hour to lift that isolation and loneliness that, after 14 weeks, could well take hold. So, if you could give us anything on that where we can look at how we might be able to help, it would be really good if we could be confident that those who are going into people's homes—helping the elderly, helping those who are pregnant and helping those with other conditions—are really safe.
I wanted to touch on access to medicines in a number of different ways, one is access to medicines from abroad. I understand that there are a few areas where medicines are being held back or production is being altered, and I wondered whether you could just give us any overview on what the home nations are doing to ensure that we can get access to medicines. But, I also wanted to talk very briefly, First Minister, about what you might put in place to ensure that general practitioners' surgeries, which would normally give somebody two weeks' worth of medication at a time, actually review their prescribing policy so that people can actually get a sufficient amount of medicine to help them if they've been self-isolated, or to stop people having to go out to keep getting these repeat prescriptions. I'm hearing quite a lot of people say, 'I can't get more than two weeks at any one time of any particular drug'.
I wondered whether you might be able to give us an outline of what support you'll be able to give additionally to the area of mental health. What plans do you have to ensure that mental health crisis care is still able to provide additional support, especially to those who need it, obviously, now? Because that actual support—and necessary support—might, in fact, be more, given the fear and concerns that people face.
This is a complete left-fielder, but I feel this actually quite strongly. People are scared. People aren't sure what's happening. We know that we talk about it and we publish it, and I wondered if you or one of your Ministers would consider talking to ITV, BBC and S4C about doing a short statement on the six o'clock news every night that just updates people with what is happening. Because I think that when you read the e-mails that come in, when you see the social media, the fake news and the general sense of panic, I just wonder if a steadying hand in the Welsh media and across the social media platforms would actually be of benefit. You don't always have to say something new; it's repeating the same old messages and telling people it's okay, they don't need to go and buy tonnes of food, they will not starve to death, they will get the medicines they need, they will get the support from all the Governments, they will be okay. I think people need to hear it daily, daily and daily.
I've left the last bit of my commentary, Presiding Officer, to pharmacies. They are under quite a lot of pressure. We have got pharmacists that still have not got any of the protective equipment that they've been promised. The protective equipment isn't great quality and there are concerns from GPs about it already, let alone the pharmacists. Pharmacists are really under pressure because what's happening is that people are phoning their GPs, GPs are saying, 'Don't come to us, we're closing our doors, we'll talk to you over the phone, we'll tell you what you want.' Well, guess where they're going? To the pharmacist. Pharmacists are feeling under immense pressure and the point they make, as they slowly fall by the wayside with this illness and have to go into self-isolation, have to close for a couple of days for a deep clean, is: what happens then? We've already got a pharmacist in Narberth who has had to close and one in Haverfordwest that's had to close. This is putting immense pressure on pharmacists. They believe that they are the ones who are having to, and do willingly—not 'having to'—give out medications for things such as diabetes, heart medication and so forth. They believe that the health boards are not supporting them. They believe that they don't really get the ramifications; they're so busy concentrating on front line in hospitals and GP surgeries that nobody is thinking about the guys who actually come along behind and sweep up a huge number of people—they're the first call if they have a problem. So, I wondered if you can perhaps address this issue because they do say that they've had no support, no advice from the actual health boards themselves.
And finally, and this is a marginally cheeky one, but of course you had a nice little warehouse stocked full of stuff ready for Brexit, and I wondered if you could actually tell us if you've still got stuff in there, what kind of stuff and would that stuff be able to be deployed in this current crisis. Thank you very much, First Minister.