1. Statement by the First Minister: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 5 August 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:32, 5 August 2020

Llywydd, I will now focus on the three-weekly review. Members will be aware that, over the past three weeks, the outlook for coronavirus has darkened in many parts of the world, from Manila to Bogota, from Australia to the United States. In Europe, the advice of the UK Government has been to re-impose quarantine arrangements for visitors returning from Spain and Luxembourg, and regulations to that effect have been laid before the Senedd. In England, since the Senedd last met, renewed lockdown measures have been introduced in Luton, Blackburn with Darwen, Oldham, and Rochdale, before last Friday's more general re-imposition of restrictions across the north-west of England and west Yorkshire.

Llywydd, I set all this out simply to place the state of the virus in Wales in context. Nobody should be under any illusion that this virus could not return rapidly and adversely here in Wales as well. And, to be clear, local spikes in coronavirus have been experienced, and continue to be experienced, here in Wales. We have ongoing outbreaks in Wrexham. The outbreak at Rowan Foods is, we believe, now fully under control, and the last case associated with this outbreak was identified on 24 July. At the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, actions continue to be taken to address a spike in cases there. Since the outbreak was declared on 25 July, seven cases have been identified at the Maelor as new hospital-acquired infections. No new hospital-acquired infections have been reported on six of the last seven days. The outbreak control team continues to meet daily and is supported by a range of partners, including Public Health Wales and the Health and Safety Executive.

Because of these two site-specific outbreaks, a decision was taken by local public health leaders to offer mass voluntary community testing in parts of Wrexham. Of the 1,418 people tested, only 11 new positive cases were identified, and that's a positivity rate of 0.7 per cent. Given that the Joint Biosecurity Centre cites a positivity rate of 4 per cent as the threshold for any emerging concern, the focus in Wrexham remains on bringing the site-specific outbreaks to an end, and, of course, our test, trace, protect system is at the forefront of this effort.