Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 22 April 2020.
Llywydd, I thank Paul Davies for those questions. Let me be clear that testing is taking place in all parts of Wales. Over 20,000 tests have been carried out in Wales during the coronavirus crisis. Forty per cent of those tests have been made available to front-line healthcare staff. There is more that needs to be done to simplify the process from which social care staff in particular can be identified and then offered testing at the different centres that we have, and that's one of the key conclusions of the rapid review that Paul Davies referred to. We need to simplify that process while still safeguarding essential safety aspects of the system. It is really important that the right person does turn up at the right time in the right place for the right test. It sounds easier than it is to get all of those things lined up when you have a very scattered population, all of whom have to be put through a certain level of assurance. But we did hear from the head of the Welsh Local Government Association today—some of us—that some of the immediate steps that have been taken are accelerating their ability to put forward social care staff for testing, and that more tests are being done as a result. The rapid review proposed that we should report weekly on the number of tests available, the number of tests being taken out, and the steps that are in place to increase that further week by week, and that's what we will be doing. There will be more tests available by the end of this week than there were at the end of last week, and I believe that we will have more people taking up those tests as we simplify the referral process.
Paul Davies, Llywydd, I thought set out very well some of the challenges that there are there in getting information and other aspects to the care home sector, given its nature here in Wales. But we are working closely with Care Forum Wales; I want to again just express my thanks to them for everything they are doing to strengthen their ability to get information to that front line. There is absolutely no suggestion anywhere that we are weakening the guidance. We were part of the rapid review of guidance that the UK Government led, which has resulted in an extended number of people in the care sector particularly becoming entitled to PPE, and we are observing and implementing that guidance here in Wales. As a result of all of that, we will have provided 48 million pieces of PPE from stores here in Wales—40 per cent of our pandemic store supplies going to social care. The struggle we have is to replenish those stocks in a globally competitive market. We know already where our stocks are and how much we have in reserve. We carry out regular exercises to make sure that we get the most up-to-date reports from across the system about stores that are being held, or different items in different parts of Wales. And as we draw down supplies that come into Wales from outside, we act as quickly as we can to make sure that those stores are dispersed to the different centres from which they are then onwardly transmitted to the 640 GP practices we have in Wales, the 715 pharmacies that we have in Wales, and the thousand or so care homes we have in Wales. Members will see that this is a huge logistical exercise and one that is taking an enormous amount of time, effort and commitment from dedicated people working in the health service and in local government right across Wales.