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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:07 pm on 13 May 2020.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 3:07, 13 May 2020

Thank you for that. So, just for clarity's sake, I want to confirm that it's 10,000 tests by the end of May, because your document says,

'We will continue to increase this capacity over the coming weeks and months, potentially to as many as 10,000 tests a day', and I think we just need that clarity, given the shambles we've seen over the last few weeks.

I'd like to just turn quickly to non-COVID harms, and particularly to the diagnosis and treatment of critical conditions such as cancer. You mention the non-COVID harms in your statement. Now, we were already behind on so many metrics before the pandemic. People are contacting me because they need investigative treatment, they can't get it, they think they have cancer, or they've been told they might have cancer. They're really worried, and they see that hospitals are under less pressure than we all thought that they would be, and so these people are suffering excruciating mental torment, not sure what's going on and when they can get that treatment.

I understand the health boards are working on this, but when will services start? Can you give us a rough time frame? Are we talking a couple of weeks or a couple of months? And can we restart the screening programme, such as for breast cancer, because that's not hospital based—that's a mobile unit? Can we use the mobile units of organisations such as Tenovus to actually give and to administer treatments? Because, again, those kinds of areas should be easy to keep as green zones. What plans do you have to cope with the backlog, and how do you plan to engage with the public to get them to come back into these vital services for the treatment that they so desperately need?