COVID-19: Testing for Care Home Staff

Part of 6. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:07 pm on 15 July 2020.

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Photo of David Lloyd David Lloyd Plaid Cymru 3:07, 15 July 2020

Like myself, the Minister is a student of history, and, obviously, while he was signing off these regs last night, he would have been watching that excellent S4C documentary on the Spanish flu of 1918, which revealed, obviously, there was a large first peak, then absolutely nothing happened for four months—no cases, no patients, no nothing—and then there was a huge second peak, with 10 times the deaths of the first peak. So, that's what history shows us. But, obviously, in terms of planning or mitigating any possible second wave, testing, tracing and protection is absolutely key. So, can the Minister guarantee now, with all the evidence we've garnered in the health committee over the last few months, the primacy of local public health teams? They're doing some excellent work here in Wales, and it's still basically a public service here. But can he also guarantee that as many—that the testing that's done in our laboratories here in Wales as well, in our hospitals and in our universities, as a public service, especially for the home-testing kits sent away by courier to private laboratories in England, which accounts for why you can't get the result back within 24 hours—. So, obviously, with regard to the contact tracing, getting the result back in 24 hours is absolutely key, which is why we need to ensure that we have the testing capacity here in our universities and our hospital laboratories. Can you guarantee that that's going to get—in terms of 100 per cent? Because that's how we're going to get the turnaround results in 24 hours, and also to involve GPs. The weakness of having a private overlay system linked into the UK is that GPs have no access to those results. We're absolutely cut off. People don't know, and obviously the private sector has no link to the NHS in terms of testing. So, there are weaknesses, and if they weren't written into your regulations, while you were studying last night and watching this documentary—I realise you had a lot on your plate—can you review that for any future regulations? Diolch yn fawr.