2. Statement by the First Minister: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 22 April 2020.

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Photo of Mark Reckless Mark Reckless Conservative 2:04, 22 April 2020

First Minister, may I thank you not just for your statement but for all the work that you and your team are doing? I trust that you are bearing up well in these quite extraordinary circumstances.

In trying to scrutinise what Welsh Government is doing, it is tempting to concentrate on the areas where the approach in Wales is somewhat different, perhaps, than that taken by the UK Government. But, overall, those differences are relatively small, and I think there's a far greater commonality in approach than there is any difference. There is, however, I think, between the UK and most countries in Europe, some difference in terms of how we approach that—that our lockdown, or at least compulsory lockdown, measures, came in rather later, and we are seeing, even in just looking at hospital deaths, deaths in the UK, and, indeed, Wales, on a per capita basis, as at or towards the top of the European league table, if that's not an inappropriate phrase to use, and the difficulties of the data and the comparisons are very real.

I just wonder—. We can see that very negative side of it, all the families who are affected by those losses, and we commiserate in every possible way with them. We see that happening. What is the Welsh Government's planning assumption about what that will mean as we gradually, at some point in the future, are able to loosen measures? Does the Welsh Government consider that there will be a greater degree of immunity from people who have had the virus, be that asymptomatic or be that with relatively limited symptoms? There are studies suggesting in Stockholm perhaps around 30 per cent of people having had infection. Do we have an assumption or any way of measuring or projecting what that will be for Wales and what the impact of that will be when we consider easing measures?

Could I also ask about the testing regime? We had, some time ago, community testing, and that was then shut down as we moved from one stage of the pandemic to another. We've had these targets of 5,000, or perhaps 9,000, at the end of the month for Wales, and 100,000 for the UK, or for England. I don't know if those are the right targets, but it doesn't look as if we're particularly in distance of hitting them, and I just wonder what can be done to make testing more widespread.

One health board that I'm in good contact with—and it may be a more general issue—at least at the end of last week, didn't want to give wider testing to partners and other organisations because of concerns that they didn't have cover around data protection and GDPR, and they were waiting for Public Health Wales to publish, or at least share with them, a protocol on what should be done. Surely the degree of emphasis that would go to those issues should be less when we have a pandemic of this scale and we have this urgency of having greater testing. And if an organisation is sharing data from someone who's had a test and is sharing a swab to be tested with another organisation, a health board that's got the testing capacity, why can't that be tested and the test result and the other data returned whence it came, given that the person has given permission for that test? I know, ideally, one would like to give a lot of feedback and ensure what pathways people would go down, depending on what that test result is, but surely it is better that—if people believe they have coronavirus, it is better that they are tested and find out for sure whether they do or do not have that. I just wonder: can Welsh Government do anything or show a lead in terms of any data protection issues, if there still is a concern that's slowing or making it hard to test people who are not directly employed by the health boards? Can you as First Minister give a lead in that area?