Dealing with Future Pandemics

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 11:02 am on 1 July 2020.

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Photo of Caroline Jones Caroline Jones UKIP 11:02, 1 July 2020

Thank you, First Minister. I'm sure that you will agree that we were woefully unprepared for COVID-19. Despite SARS and MERS, our pandemic planning was still based upon an outbreak of influenza. However, our planning still neglected to prioritise testing capacity. This current pandemic has shown that those countries that had testing capacity early on made it through the initial outbreak relatively unscathed.

Leading virologists have warned that other unknown viruses could threaten us in future as climate change and population growth force humans into closer contact with wildlife. As with this coronavirus, we have to test and isolate the infected, and we can't afford to quarantine everyone. First Minister, what plans does your Government have to ensure that Wales has sufficient lab capacity to conduct tens of thousands of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction tests on a daily basis? Thank you.