Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 20 October 2020.
Well, Llywydd, Mick Antoniw's opening remarks do remind me of a conversation that I had only yesterday with a young person in Cardiff, who told me that she had telephoned her general practitioner surgery in the morning, she had a reply back from the GP before 9.30 a.m., the GP sent her a text message by 9.45 a.m. for a video consultation, the video consultation had been completed by 10 o'clock in the morning, and everything that that young person needed from her GP service had been concluded within 90 minutes of her making the original phone call. I think that is a remarkable service, and that young person was just full of praise for the way it had all been conducted on her phone, in the way that young people are able to do, and she certainly wouldn't want to go back to the way things were before.
In relation to the additional stocks, we will have over 400,000 additional vaccines here in Wales, compared to the supplies we had last year. They don't all arrive at once and it's inevitable that there is some prioritisation, in which those patients who are most at risk get it first. We're very lucky that flu is in very low circulation in Wales at this point, very early on, of course, in the flu season. We publish a weekly data monitor of the circulation of flu through Public Health Wales. In the first week, which I think was just two weeks ago, there were two reported cases of influenza in the whole of Wales. So, the prioritisation programme is working, it's working in line with clinical risk, and over this winter and into December, there will be significantly additional vaccines available—enough to vaccinate an additional 40 to 50 per cent of adults in Wales, who are able to get a vaccination free of charge in the NHS this year, compared to those age cohorts we were able to provide a service of that sort to last year.