4. Will the Minister make a statement on the effectiveness of the track and trace regime in North Wales? OQ55428

The NHS Wales track and trace service has had a positive start, with well over 84 per cent of contacts being successfully made. The TTP service has been a crucial aspect of successfully, to date, managing the two outbreaks in north Wales, and I want to pay tribute to both partners and our front-line staff for the work that they are doing to help keep Wales safe. 

Thank you for your response. Of course, the success of any such initiative is very much dependent on the initial testing, and we've seen as we have this week with some cases relating to pubs in England that immediate tracking based on quick testing is the most effective way to identify those who should be self-isolating. At the same time, we're still hearing of cases where people with symptoms are actually waiting more than five days for test results. So, why are we still seeing this lag, Minister, in getting test results back? What implications would you say that has for preventing the further spread of the disease?

It's a matter of concern. It's been raised in previous questions, not just here, but outside as well, about the need to see a further improvement in the speed of test returns, because it does then mean we should have an even more effective contact tracing service and system, and the individual instances—it doesn't matter whether they're a relatively small minority in percentage terms—they all represent a risk factor for the individual and for their contacts. That's why there's a range of improvement action already under way. Rather than explaining away why it doesn't matter, it does matter, and that's why we need to see more efficiency in the lab process as well as couriering and making sure that more and more people get their results promptly. Because, actually, our contact tracing service are doing a very good job of following up those contacts when they're provided by people who've had a positive case, and we need to have people to continue to positively buy in to the contact tracing service so they don't feel they're being told to self-isolate unnecessarily, as that may affect people's willingness to continue to self-isolate in the future, and that's important for all of us, whether we know those people or not, to help keep Wales safe. 

Question 5 [OQ55415] has been withdrawn, therefore, question 6, Joyce Watson.