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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:36 pm on 29 April 2020.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 3:36, 29 April 2020

Minister, I'd just like to pick up on the question that David Melding asked you about testing and how we exit our lockdown. I understand that you haven't yet formulated all your plans and you need to work on them, and you want to put more meat on the bones, but I am concerned in respect of surveillance testing. You know the Welsh Conservatives have pushed for having a very clear departmental team in charge of making testing happen today, which we know it's not: 2,100 hospital tests can be done every day, and we're doing about 700, and it's nowhere near the ambition of 9,000. And we also want to make sure that that team has a really good idea moving forward of how we look at the whole surveillance issue.

Now, during last week's parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee meeting at Westminster, the chief medical officer was asked about the plan for testing in Wales, and he basically intimated that there's a technical advisory group that takes details from SAGE and flexes them for a Welsh context. I just wondered if you could give us a little bit more detail on that. Who are these people? Are they from a science background, an NHS background? Are they actually modellers? What data, given that our data is not great in some areas, are they using to flex it for that Welsh context?