Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:56 pm on 10 November 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:56, 10 November 2020

Llywydd, mass testing does have a potentially very important role to play. We will learn a great deal from the Liverpool experiment. It's not straightforward. If you go for whole-population testing, you're doing it on a voluntary basis. There are very significant logistical issues to consider, and the testing is only one part of it, because you have to have everything in place to deal with the additional number of people who you will undoubtedly discover as being positive with coronavirus if you test in that way.

We are engaged with the Liverpool pilot. We are purposefully planning for the way in which we could use mass population 'whole-town testing', as it's called, here in Wales. And I think that by learning from the very early lessons that are emerging already from the Liverpool experience, we will be able to mount a whole-town approach to testing in a way that will be more immediately effective, and I want to make sure that when the moment comes, we're able to do that here in Wales. We've done all the preparatory work so that it delivers for that local population.