Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:23 pm on 3 November 2020.
Well, Llywydd, I have to take issue with what was a nonsensical introduction to what turned out to be a sensible question at the end of it. The sensible point that the Member managed to make was about the way in which NHS premises in Wales are creating separate facilities for people suffering from coronavirus in order to be able to protect facilities for those people who need to use the NHS for every other reason. Earlier today, Llywydd, the director general and chief executive of the NHS took the Welsh Government press conference and dealt directly with the issue of the spread of coronavirus within hospitals. He said that, of course,
'We regret every case of hospital-acquired Covid. But I want to be clear',
Dr Goodall said,
'this is not as simple as a failure of hand-washing or poor infection control procedures.'
He went on to explain the ways in which coronavirus can still, despite everything that our staff do to safeguard those closed settings and those people who work and are treated within them—despite all those efforts, he set out the ways in which this highly infectious virus can still make its way into those places, and how incredibly difficult it can be to prevent its spread in busy healthcare environments, especially when we see 100 people with coronavirus being admitted to our hospitals now every day. And I think just a little more understanding, on behalf of the Member, for everything that those front-line staff do to deal with those really difficult circumstances would not have gone amiss, given the questions we've had earlier today in marking the ongoing efforts that those people make to keep us all safe.