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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:38 pm on 22 April 2020.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:38, 22 April 2020

Thank you for the questions. I want to reiterate, on PPE, the point about the guidance needing to be followed. The last thing that we need to do is to encourage people to use PPE in larger quantities outside the guidance, because whilst that might provide some people who don't need it with more confidence, it will take away the supply from our front-line staff who really do. What we need is to make sure that each one of our front-line settings, including residential and domiciliary care, where they need to use PPE, have access to it. That's why we've taken the extraordinary step of using our public resources to provide PPE to independent businesses. We would not normally do that. If, in normal times, we were providing free of charge PPE to those going concerns, then people would have an entirely different set of questions, but it demonstrates this once-in-a-century threat that we are confronted with and the way that we are responding. 

On the process of referrals, I'm happy to report that that has already improved. And, as I've said, we've heard directly from local government that a much larger number of referrals are being made of workers in the care sector. It's important to me those aren't just people employed by local authorities directly but people in the independent sector, as Dai Rees highlights. So we need to make sure that they have referrals that are speeded through, whether through the local authority or directly, to make sure that they're provided with the test and promptly. Again, the figures that we've published today should give some confidence that those results are then provided quickly.  

On the particular point on cancer referrals, I recognise Dai Rees's longstanding interest in the work of the country on improving cancer outcomes, and it's one of the things that I am concerned about to make sure that urgent referrals where urgent care is needed don't get put to one side. That's already one of the things I've asked the service to look into as part of my concern to understand accurately the picture, and then not just to present that picture but actually to do something about it; to encourage people to come forward to address their very real healthcare need because, as we know, late referral, late recognition of cancer often leads to much more radical treatment and actually compromises the best prospects of people having a good outcome. So, they're definitely points that I want to take up, and you'll hear more from me over the coming weeks on the work that is being done to do just that, and I hope that provides an answer to Dai's question.