Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:18 pm on 13 May 2020.
Thank you. As I said before, and I guess I'll have the opportunity to say this on every single occasion I come here, when the evidence changes, if the advice changes, the Government will be happy to reconsider its position on any of the areas of activity we're undertaking. That includes the developing evidence base on asymptomatic testing in care homes. We made a move on changing our policy on testing across the whole care home environment, you'll recall, a couple of weeks ago for areas where there was either a confirmed case or a suspected case where someone was symptomatic, so we'll learn more from that about asymptomatic testing, the likely prevalence and also the value in how we deploy our testing resource, and the value we expect to get from that. It's really important to understand how we use it in the best way to keep as many people safe, well and alive as possible. So, again, if the evidence does change, then I'm happy to move, and I'm certainly not looking to be stubborn and dig my heels into the ground on any of these issues, because it's all got to be about the overwhelming priority and purpose, which is about keeping people alive and well.
On hospital discharge, we've introduced a policy where there should be testing on discharge in hospital before they go to a care home. If Members of any group are aware of somewhere where they think that isn't happening, or they've got cases of people who have come to them, they should take that up with the health board initially, but if there isn't an appropriate response, then by all means contact my office, because I would want to know if those issues aren't being addressed in accordance with the ministerial decision on this that I have already made and communicated.
The points about quarantine are rather more difficult because, again, we need an evidence base on where the value is for that. The Member and others will know that the phrase 'quarantine' is probably unhelpful, but I understand what the Member is trying to get at. But if you're going to hold people in an environment, what environment is that? Are you still making sure that people are mobilised, because real harm is caused when people are kept in an inappropriate environment, where a hospital is no longer the right place for someone, especially older people, then real harm can be caused, not just healthcare-acquired infections but also physical deconditioning as well.
When we're talking about the harms that are caused, what we don't want to do is ignore that harm that really can be caused and the wider social harm that can be caused by people becoming deconditioned and losing their independence as well. What I don't want to do is to fill up all of our field hospitals as centres where people are held before going back into the care home sector. We've had a proper national conversation on how we make use of that capacity. What I would not want is that we potentially have a further rise in coronavirus in September and our field hospitals are then full of people who could and should be in care homes.
We need to understand the evidence, we need to have a conversation with all parts of our system, and that includes local government and people like Care Forum Wales, who represent many people within the care home sector, to understand what the right answer is, how we build confidence in the system, how we understand the different harms that can be caused by making different choices. So, it's not a closed-door response, but I do think we've got to think about what that evidence looks like, and there's already a conversation that I've asked for to take place between health and local government, and then to draw in our colleagues in Care Forum Wales to understand what that could and should look like.