3. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:17 pm on 1 April 2020.

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Photo of Adam Price Adam Price Plaid Cymru 3:17, 1 April 2020

I'm grateful to the First Minister for confirming the identity of the company involved in the collapsed deal. I was wondering, Minister, if you'd respond to the statement, therefore, that Roche put out last night that it does not have and has never had a contract or agreement directly with Wales to supply testing for COVID-19. Is it your view, therefore, that that statement isn't true, they would have known it wasn't true, and they're effectively lying?

Now we know the 'who' in relation to this collapsed deal, but we're still a little bit unclear about the 'why', so I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about that, your understanding as to why the deal collapsed, and particularly this widely held suggestion that, effectively, it was scuppered by a parallel deal with Public Health England, which the company chose in precedence over the deal with the Welsh Government.

In relation to the new four-nation arrangement for testing procurement, there has been a reference to Wales receiving a population share of tests, I understand. But shouldn't that be higher given the particular demographics of Wales that you, Minister, have referred to previously, and also the epidemiology, the fact that Wales has 4.7 per cent of the UK population, but 8 per cent, I believe, of the current confirmed cases, therefore shouldn't we be getting 8 per cent of the tests?

Will you be publishing a daily figure for the number of tests undertaken as Scotland does, so we can track progress as we move forward? And also, the question that I put to the First Minister, I was wondering if you could address: has the Welsh Government approached the Welsh universities or have the universities approached Welsh Government to see if we can use the scientific expertise within our laboratories there to actually improve our own testing capacity in Wales? And do we have a figure—? We have a figure, I believe, for the number of tests that have been conducted with NHS staff. Do we have any figures about the degree of confirmed cases as a result of those tests? How does that compare with the general population?

Moving on to PPE, you refer to some of the numbers of items that have been sourced and supplied. Do you have, Minister, an idea of the number of total people that currently you're advising require PPE? It would be interesting to see, if you have figures, just to have some sense of that. I noticed that, just today, the Basque co-operative Mondragon has just announced a new production line to manufacture 0.5 million masks a day. Will you be approaching Welsh manufacturers to see whether we could manage the same here in Wales in order to improve our own level of supply?

Just finally, on the issue of local authorities that I touched on as well, I understand the advice to local authorities is not to procure their own PPE independently, but are they free to do so if they feel that that is necessary?