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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 22 April 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:09, 22 April 2020

Llywydd, can I thank Mark Reckless for his opening remarks? The relationship between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom in the coronavirus crisis is one in which I believe that working alongside the other Governments is a strength, that, when we can do things together and send a single message out to the public, that makes that message simpler and therefore more readily heard and understood. But, where there are things that we need to do differently to meet Welsh circumstances, then of course we will do that as well. But I always go into the room with other UK Governments looking for common ground and trying to craft a way forward in which we can all sign up to it together.

I agree with what Mr Reckless said about following European evidence, about looking at experience elsewhere. Other European countries are coming out of coronavirus ahead of us, are lifting restrictions before we are able to do so. We need to capture the learning that they will have about what the impact of that will be.

On immunity, my understanding of this is that we don't have good enough evidence from anywhere in the world that having coronavirus gives you a level of immunity that means that you can confidently go and provide services to people who have the virus, knowing that you can't be reinfected, or that you can't be a source of difficulties to others. There is a huge amount of work going on in many countries to try and establish that evidence, but, today, you couldn't confidently say to somebody who'd been tested, who the test demonstrates that they've had the virus, that that now means that they can safely go and put themselves in places that otherwise would be a source of risk to them.

The pattern for the future that we are anticipating in Wales depends a great deal on the rate of conformity with the current lockdown arrangements. If it was only 40 per cent, the virus could still be rising. If it's 60 per cent, then we can be pretty confident that the virus rate of spread in the community will be going down. If it's 75 per cent, we may well see a very real suppression of the virus that will last into the weeks ahead. So, the modelling depends upon the extent to which we can go on persuading people to abide by the restrictions. As you know, in Wales, we've had a fantastic response to that, but we need to make sure that that continues.

On testing and on the data-sharing issue particularly, the Information Commissioner put out guidance very early on that said that his office would look sympathetically on measures that were being taken to make sure the data was properly shared, while making it clear that the law has not changed. Therefore, when organisations are sharing data—and remember the data belongs to the patient, not to the organisations; so, it's your data and my data, and the person being tested's data that is being shared—there is still an obligation on organisations to make sure that that is being done in a way that is careful and proportionate. While I don't want general data protection regulation and data-sharing issues to get in the way of doing the right thing, I do understand why people who will be held responsible for the way in which they have made those decisions on our data need to make sure that they are doing it in a way that would continue to stand up to scrutiny from the Information Commissioner and any court of law.