Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:29 pm on 1 April 2020.
I think, to be fair, Llywydd, that I've dealt with the point about ventilators, both in terms of supply and manufacture, in response to the questions that Adam Price asked, and also Angela Burns in terms of the collaboration between officials in my department, Ken Skates's department, and people making those and manufacturing them here in Wales.
In terms of the point about volunteering, we've had a really significant response from people in Wales, so whilst there’s been some confusion over the headline messages that are being played out, actually, lots of people in Wales have found a way to go to be able to volunteer within their local communities in either smaller groups that have been set up, but also through the national Volunteering Wales portal. So, we've got over 30,000 people registered as volunteers, and within the last week we've had a rate of 1,000 people a day registering to be volunteers to support people in their local community. Part of the challenge was that there was, I think, a misunderstanding in the way that the England-only scheme was launched. Some of our colleague elected representatives in Wales didn't understand that there was, simply, an England-only scheme and not a scheme that was designed and delivered by the four Governments across the UK. So, we've got a good response already, and that's being put to use, with the third sector and local government working together to do so.
In terms of GP access to the list of vulnerable people, we've been really open in developing both the lists and criteria for people on the shielded group of 81,000 people. So, we've worked together with the British Medical Association and the royal college of GPs, and, by the latest, from 2 o'clock today that list will have been available in the GP portal for every GP practice to review the groups of their patients on that list so they can exercise their judgment and knowledge of their group of patients if they believe there are other people who should be on that group of shielded people. We'll continue to develop our response in supporting the wider group of vulnerable people over the coming days, as I say, working together, I'm sure, with local government and the third sector.
And, in terms of your broader points about testing and learning with other countries, well, it is fair to say that South Korea, for example, is in a different place because of its experience of having been much harder hit by SARS in the past. Now, there'll be lessons for us to learn in the here and now, and Public Health Wales are in regular contact with public health organisations in countries in Europe and the wider world, on help and advice in the here and now.
So, for example, we've definitely learned lessons from Italy; that's why we've put so much energy and effort into creating field hospital capacity at such pace, because that's about getting people out of hospital when they no longer need to be there. And it's even more crucial now, because people who are delayed getting into a hospital are people who really may well need life-saving care. So, that's one of the lessons we've already learned, and we're talking about lessons as it emerges that some of the social distancing measures will start to be relaxed. That's really important for us about our response to the pandemic here in Wales and the rest of the UK. But, equally, that conversation will continue.
Public Health Wales are actually in a very good position in the global public health community, and certainly within the World Health Organization European region, in terms of the respect we have, the ability we have to share learning on a variety of different topics, and that will be really important—to look back about what's happened to learn lessons where we think we may have been able to make different and better choices during the period of this pandemic, but also for the future. And that will be a whole society-wide conversation, because, if we want to have extra capacity in place for a future pandemic, we need to fund that and create that capacity and have that ready and available. And that's a different sort of choice for us to make about the way that we support public services.