Part of 4. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:11 pm on 8 July 2020.
Well, the First Minister and I have acknowledged, not just today but on regular occasions, the concern we have for the significant backlog that is being created in NHS demand and need. We've talked at various points—in fact, at early stages during the pandemic—about the concern over some people opting not to come in for treatment. One of the earliest points that I made was the fall-off in people coming in for treatment for strokes. I don't believe that's because, within a number of weeks of going into lockdown, the incidence of stroke in Wales suddenly fell off a cliff. Actually, it's because people were opting not to come in. That's part of the difficulty of what we need to do to re-engineer our service progressively. As the First Minister has outlined, there are plans in place to have, if you like, green zones, where they're COVID-free or COVID-light, and red zones, where there are suspected or COVID-positive people being treated. But we need to engender enough confidence for people to use the service.
This is not a question of being wise after the event. We know that the excess deaths in Wales are more than 2,000 excess deaths since the start of the pandemic period. If we hadn't taken action, we can be awfully confident that we would have seen more deaths. So, our challenge is how we balance the different harms, the different challenges, that lockdown presents, easing out of lockdown and getting ourselves ready for what may take place over the autumn and the winter. But there's certainly no complacency within the Government or our national health service.