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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:14 pm on 13 May 2020.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:14, 13 May 2020

In terms of the strategy document, it's similar to the strategy document that Scotland published, in the sense that it's a public-facing strategy document to give an explanation of the strategy we're going to follow, about what the ask is of the public and how our whole system is gearing up to deliver that. There will, of course, be a detailed operational plan that's in development between the different parts of our service, and we'll learn more about that as, at some point over the next week, we'll have health boards and some of their partner local authorities looking to trial some of the contact tracing element of it, with a particular focus on the care home sector. There'll be lots of learning to take from that. I'm expecting to have confirmation of the particular pilot areas, if you like, in different parts of the country that are going to move forward. That again comes from the work that the health boards and local authorities are undertaking themselves. There'll be lots of learning over that trial period before we get to the end of May, not just in those pilot areas, but to deliberately share across the rest of the country.

So, actually, in a really brief period of time, we've had lots and lots of development, and real progress. We'll have a trial that's going to start in different areas next week, we'll have learning that comes from that, and, of course, I expect that not just in terms of confirming who's undertaking trials, but then the learning from those as we build towards having that more detailed operational plan in place—so, all the detail about the scripts that the tracers will need to use, and the detail of it you can expect to find in those documents available in the service to go with the training for people. This document, though, is a public-facing document that says, 'This is the strategy we're going to take. This is the approach. Here are more of the numbers following the leaked draft report that people discussed. We now have more finesse and understanding across our whole system of what's needed and how we're going to go about it'.

In terms of your point about local access, that's why we've got mobile testing units and it's also why our ability now to make proper use of the home testing service is really important. It's UK led, but there's been sign-up and agreement from all countries in the UK to make use of that home testing service, and that will mean that our reach in remote areas of the country—and they exist in rural, semi-rural and urban Wales as well—will be increased. So, that's a really important step forward, and, again, the point I made in my statement really does matter—to have the ability to have the results of those fed back into the clinical record to make the maximum use of it I think will be really, really important. Of course, that will make more of a difference when we have a reliable antibody test and we're able to deploy that within our system.